The Carolina Panthers are celebrating their 20th NFL season this year. Each week during the 2014 season, Panthers.com will take a look back at a special play, player, game or moment from each of the team's 20 seasons.
Thomas Davis knows exactly what it is like to play a key role in a Panthers playoff victory.
But as a rookie in January of 2006, following the 2005 regular season, he didn't realize it would be nine years before he would experience another postseason win.
Carolina finished second in the NFC South in 2005 with an 11-5 record to earn a playoff berth as a Wild Card team and a trip to New York to play the NFC East champion Giants on January 8. The underdog Panthers dominated the game for a 23-0 victory, becoming the first NFL team to record a shutout on the road in the playoffs since the 1979 NFC Championship when the Los Angeles Rams blanked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Davis said he sees similarities between the Panthers who headed into that game and the Panthers who prepared for last week's NFC Wild Card win over the Arizona Cardinals at Bank of America Stadium.
"I just remember going into that game (against the Giants) how confident the veteran guys were about going up there and actually winning that game," Davis said. "This year I was one of the veteran guys going into last week's game, and I felt confident like that and tried to let the younger guys see that.
In the game against New York, Davis served as a spy on Giants running back Tiki Barber and came up big against one the NFL's most dangerous and versatile backs, helping hold him to a season-low 41 yards rushing and just three catches for 28 yards. It was a signature moment for the defense and Davis, who, as a rookie, had mostly played as a reserve safety and on special teams. Davis believes the job he did that day set him up for future success as a starting outside linebacker.
"It was a pretty good challenge - with Tiki being one of the great backs in the league at that time. But I was called on to do a job, and I embraced that role," Davis said. "It was sort of like when I was assigned to spy on Michael Vick when we played Atlanta back then. I feel like I did a pretty good job, and it sort of set me up for the rest of my career, as far as being a guy who had a reputation for being able to step up to a challenge."
Barber said of Davis and the Panthers' defense that day: "It was strange. They were in our huddle a little bit. They kind of had us dissected and figured out, and we couldn't get anything going consistently."
That was long before Davis suffered the first of what would be three torn anterior cruciate ligament injuries to his right knee. He missed the last nine games of the 2009 season and then tore the ACL in the same knee during organized team activities the next June, causing him to miss the entire 2010 season. Davis returned in 2011 but only played two games before suffering the same fate yet again.
But while men of less physical and mental fortitude might have called it quits on an NFL career long before then, Davis doggedly attempted to recover and make a triumphant comeback to the playing field.
He did so in 2012 and has played three largely injury-free seasons since, actually appearing to become better with age. Now 31, Davis is coming off seasons in which he produced 118, a career-high 151 and 129 tackles, respectively, and has now started more games at linebacker than any player in franchise history.
Along with fellow linebacker Luke Kuechly, Davis is one of the undisputed leaders of a defense that set an NFL record versus Arizona for the fewest yards allowed in a postseason game with 78. The overall defensive performance enabled the Panthers to register a 27-16 victory, prompting Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald to say, "Kuechly and Davis, those two hellacious players, they make plays all day for them and they made it tough for us."
Davis also sees similarities in the Panthers' 2014 regular season and his own star-crossed career. He had to overcome the three ACL injuries to arrive at Saturday's NFC Divisional Playoff against the Seattle Seahawks; the 2014 Panthers had to overcome a six-game losing streak to even make the playoffs, which they did by winning the NFC South with a 7-8-1 record.
"This season we had a lot of ups and downs, just like my career. But I definitely feel we're trending in the right way now," Davis said. "Even when we went two months without a win, guys never lost focus, never lost sight of the goal. And our division did us a favor by being so bad this year that we were able to stay in it.
"When it came down to the end, we started getting guys back healthy and we just played one week at a time, one win at a time. We knew if we could string some wins together, we could set ourselves up to be doing what we're doing right now. We stayed together as a group, and that's why we are where we are."
But Davis said there is one major difference between the playoff success he experienced as a rookie and the playoff success he is enjoying now. Like most young players, he took it for granted then - but he knows better than to do so now.
"That's exactly what you do as a rookie. When you come in and have that kind of success as a team, you think that's what it's going to be like every year," Davis said. "You learn over time that it's tough to make the playoffs; it's not easy.
"It's something that to do it consistently, you have to be good and you have to be ready to work hard day in and day out. It most certainly is sweeter this time, coming after a period in my career when there was so much uncertainty and I didn't know what to expect next or if I would even be able to play football again or not. For me to be able to come back and have three really good seasons and now be part of back-to-back division championships for the first time in the history of the NFC South, it's definitely a great feeling."
