Country star Luke Combs roasts Carolina Panthers for trading star players
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WGHP) — It has been a tumultuous few seasons for fans of the Carolina Panthers.
It has been six seasons since the Panthers last made the playoffs or posted a winning record.
Country music star Luke Combs, who grew up in North Carolina, is a Panthers fan and took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to let out his frustrations with the team’s recent decision-making.
@Panthers “WHAT ARE WE DOING?!?!? No first round pick for McCaffrey a few years back and now none for Burns?!?! Are we just fire bombing the whole team here or what? I usually don’t comment on these kinds of things but it’s just becoming slow torture at this point.”
Combs later made a guest appearance on the Pat McAfee Show and said “It’s tough right now being a Carolina Panthers fan,” and that he doesn’t “know what the answer is” and if there’s some big plan he doesn’t “understand it.”
The team recently went 2-15, finishing with the worst record in the NFL and did not receive the first overall pick in the draft after trading away that pick as well as DJ Moore to the Chicago Bears to move up in the draft and select quarterback Bryce Young.
During those six seasons, many talented players have either been released, retired or traded away by the Panthers.
The “rebuild” first began in 2020 after the team fired longtime head coach Ron Rivera and hired Baylor University’s Matt Rhule. The beginning of the Rhule era saw the retirement of Luke Kuechly, as well as the decisions to release Cam Newton and allow Thomas Davis and Greg Olsen to leave in free agency.
After two 5-win seasons and a 1-4 start in 2022, the Panthers fired Rhule and a short time after that began another rebuild by trading away star running back Christian McCaffrey to the San Francisco 49ers.
During that season, the Los Angeles Rams reportedly offered Carolina two first-round draft picks in exchange for star pass rusher Brian Burns and the Panthers declined.
However, after failing to negotiate a contract extension with Burns, the Panthers traded him to the New York Giants on Monday in exchange for a second-round pick and a fifth-round pick.
The return for Burns in the trade obviously pales in comparison to what Carolina was offered previously by the Rams, and this event was enough to send Combs over the edge.
