What the Panthers have to say about it all, straight from the locker room

And they had a lot to say before they left.

On their almost perfect season

“It was awesome. It was a heck of a run. 17 and 2 – was that our final record? 17 and 2, that’s pretty special in the NFL. We just didn’t check that last box. There was only one more thing we could have accomplished, but that’s the way it goes. It was a great year, we’ve accomplished a lot, we’ve made a lot of progress.” – Greg Olsen

“We had a good time and we enjoyed it.” – Charles Johnson

“At the end of the day, we had an unbelievable season. A great season at that. And we did what a lot of people didn’t expect us to do. Hell, we did a lot of things that we were fast into doing. People knew we were gonna win, but they didn’t know how fast we would win. At one point, we were undefeated, and the truth of the matter is, we got two losses. Some teams had two losses the first two weeks. So that’s the truth of the matter. For me, nothing’s pretty much changed. You get what you get.” – Cam Newton

On losing the Super Bowl

“You know, obviously we came up short, obviously we’re very disappointed. You know, it’s not how we envisioned the game going, but at the same time, we had an incredible season. We’ve accomplished a lot.” – Greg Olsen

“[It’s not about] ‘If I woulda made that play, and if I woulda made that play, this wouldn’t have happened.’ If you’re in this thing long enough, you’re going to have those moments, you know. So the other night would be no different.” – Jerricho Cotchery

“Our guys fought their fannies off … but, you know, they scored more points than us at the end of the day, and that’s what it’s all about.” – Dave Gettleman

“I told them that nothing I say right now would make them feel any better. And then the second thing I told them is you know, right across the field is an example of a team that’s gone through what we are right now. A couple years ago, they lose in New York to Seattle, and then this year, they’re back and they win. So we can learn from their example is what I told our guys and that’s kind of what I’m looking at right now.” – Coach Ron Rivera

“Can’t you tell I’m over it already? I’m thinking about 2016. You know, it’ll be over as soon as you guys let me think about 2016.” – Coach Ron Rivera

On that fumble

“What – what would you want me to do? … Okay, I didn’t get the fumble, but we can play tit for tat. I see numerous quarterbacks throw interceptions, and their effort afterward, they don’t go. I don’t dive on one fumble – because the way my leg was, it could’ve been contorted in a way. Okay, you say my effort – I didn’t dive down. I fumbled, that’s fine. But that game wasn’t built off of – we didn’t lose that game because of that fumble, I can tell you that.” – Cam Newton

“I haven’t talked to him about that. I really haven’t. And again, if that’s his explanation, then that’s his explanation. I’m okay with his explanation. I’m not going to worry about that. It’s over, it’s done and we are going on to the 2016 season.” – Coach Ron Rivera

On what it was like to come home

“It was incredible pulling up on the buses … we’d heard that there’d be a lot of people at the stadium waiting for us. Pulling in was kind of bittersweet, you know. It was great. Fan support has been amazing all year and it was great to see everybody and know that even though we lost, they cared enough to come out and stand in the chilly night.” – Greg Olsen

“Loved it. Loved it. Those guys are tremendous. Panther Nation has always been there for us, they’ve always had our backs.” – Charles Johnson

“It was awesome. I mean, just like the fans have been for us since I started here five seasons ago, to know that they’re here to support us and love us for the most part, that’s awesome. It really is. And again, you know, we’ve been able to give them something back, and that’s, you know, a reason to cheer. And again, that’s all part of – we do our job, I know they’ll do theirs, which they did for us, which was tremendous.” – Coach Ron Rivera

On being a team

“Our progress here from 2011, Coach’s first year, ’til now, it’s a steady improvement. Just rock-solid, steady improvement. We haven’t had a lot of ups and downs drastically, we’ve continued to trend upward and this year was close to being the ultimate.” – Greg Olsen

“Coach’s message is always about his relationship with us personally, you know, it’s always about us. This is more than football to him. He’s trying to help develop men and that’s the great thing about Coach, and that’s why the guys love him. He’s a wonderful man, a wonderful human being, you know, and when you have a coach that cares about you like that, money can’t buy that, especially in this league.” – Jerricho Cotchery

“We don’t really care about the national stage. All we care about is the guys in this locker room.” – Charles Johnson

“At the end of the day, what’s already understood shouldn’t even have to be said. You know, so many people talked about the Carolina Panthers, so many people talked about Cam, so many people talked about Coach Rivera. But the truth of the matter is, nobody on this team got suspended for disciplinary reasons, you never once heard anybody on this team have to sit out games because of what they did, you never heard Coach nor no coordinator say, ‘These guys wasn’t coachable,’ and so, pretty much everything that people say about us is fluff. They say, ‘Cam’s a thug,’ they say, ‘Players on the team are classless,’ but straight up, we are professional athletes.” – Cam Newton

“I congratulated the guys today, talked about the accomplishments that we had, you know, and then started talking about going forward. I mean, that’s the truth of the matter, is you’d love to be able to be in the position Denver is, celebrating, but we’re not. That’s the truth. So going forward, there’s 30 teams behind us, one in front of us. That’s our goal. You wanna be the champions, beat the champs.” – Coach Ron Rivera

“This is a group of young men that have come together as a football team and they truly do care about each other. But I will say this though, that locker room will never be the same. I mean, I’m very proud and honored to have said I was the Head Coach of the 2015 Carolina Panthers, but they will not be the same group.” – Coach Ron Rivera

On the criticism of Cam Newton

“The way he plays, the sacrifices he makes with his body, the sacrifice with the way – the way he just plays that position, not only are they [critics] uninformed, they’ve never probably watched us play it down since he’s been in the league. That narrative right there, for anybody who’s ever seen us, is probably pretty comical.” – Greg Olsen

“I listen to Christian rap, you know, and I have a guy I listen to named Eshon Burgundy, and he made this quote in one of his raps: ‘They’ll hail you to nail you.’ Just the nature of man, they look for that moment, you know, to really drive it in on you, and that’s just one of those things, you know. When you play in the NFL, this is what you sign up for.” – Jerricho Cotchery

“I want players that hate to lose, plain and simple. I want players that I know, when the game is over, they are crawling into the locker room and they need help getting their gear off and it’s going to take them time to get into the shower to get cleaned up. I want the buses to be late to the airport if we’re traveling. We all handle defeat differently, and it’s hard. So understand that everybody reacts differently, and that at the end of the day, we didn’t get it done.” – Dave Gettleman

“I won’t say we like [the way Cam loses], we don’t want to promote it, most certainly there’s a lot of young people that are out there looking at who we are and we are role models for them, and I think, again, I don’t want to say we accept it, but we know who he is, and we know that he does take it hard. And quite honestly, if he’s going to take it hard, then maybe, as a public service, we can avoid having him talk right away.” – Coach Ron Rivera

“What we’re asking people to do in a stressful situation, after a very difficult situation or set of circumstances, is to gather composure and step up right away. I’m not sure how fair that is, I’m really not. And he’s not the only player that’s ever been through a situation like that and handled it like that. I think him coming, stepping up to the plate like he did today [in the locker room] is probably a little bit easier for him to have dealt with, having a chance to reflect and think about himself, so, you know, I don’t think it’s fair. You don’t know the young man, you don’t know the young man personally. There’s a lot of young men like this. Losing is not an easy thing. And again, he really does not like to lose. I understand that, I get that, I understand who he is.” – Coach Ron Rivera

“We know who Cam is. We understand who the young man is and who he wants to be for us, and that’s more important to us. I mean, he’s really committed himself to being our franchise quarterback. The things that he does, you guys don’t see. You guys don’t get an opportunity to talk about the early mornings or the late afternoons, coming in on Tuesday on his own time and helping, to come upstairs and sit down with Coach Shula and the other coaches and talk about what he likes in their game plans and what he sees – what he’s already seeing on a Tuesday. Most players haven’t even looked at the opponent until Wednesday morning. Those are the things his teammates appreciate, and I think again, knowing who he is as a young man that most of you guys don’t get an opportunity to see, speaks very well to when his teammates do that [cheer in the locker room] and I’m proud of the fact that they’re willing to step up for him.” – Coach Ron Rivera

“I’m human. I’ve never once said that I was perfect, I never proclaimed that I was perfect … the truth of the matter is, who are you to say that your way is right? That’s what I don’t understand. We’ve got all these people that’s condemning and saying, ‘He shoulda did this, that and the third,’ but what makes your way right?” – Cam Newton

“I’ve been on record to say I’m a sore loser. Who likes to lose? You show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser. I’m not here to – it’s not a popularity contest. I’m here to win football games.” – Cam Newton

“At the end of the day, when you invest so much time and you sacrifice so much and things don’t go as planned, I think emotions take over. I think that’s what happens. As far as trying to be like this person, trying to be like that person, I heard numerous quotes about ‘What if this person was in that situation? How would he have handled it? Well we’ve seen this person do that. How would he have handled it?’ The truth of the matter is, I’m not trying to be this person, nor am I trying to be that person. I’ve said it since day one: I am who I am, I know what I’m capable of, and I know where I’m going and I don’t have to conform to anybody else’s, you know, wants for me to do. You know, I’m not that guy. If you want me to be this type of person, I’m not that, and I’m happy to say that. This league is a great league with or without me, I understand that, and I am my own person. I take pride in that, and that’s pretty much how I feel.” – Cam Newton

“If you took the time to know who Cam Newton is, you saw all the things that he did, I think there’d be much more appreciation for who he is as a person. I don’t think that’s fair. I think people draw a conclusion on somebody on a snapshot. Don’t take a snapshot, take the whole album. Take time to read the whole book. You know that great saying, ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover.’ This is a young man I think that some people are looking at the cover and they’re looking at it the wrong way. Just take the time to know a lot of these young men that play this game. I think you might find some pretty doggone nice people.” – Coach Ron Rivera

On who’s staying and who’s going

“I don’t know everybody’s contract situation, I don’t know what the long-term plans are for this team, but, you know, they haven’t steered us wrong yet. The decisions made around here, while not always easy, while not always popular, have gotten us here to this point. So the power’s going to make the decisions in the best interest of our team. The guys we know we’ve got coming back are guys we can build around and are guys that, you know, are a big reason we’re here this season, and are going to be a big part of our success going forward.” – Greg Olsen

“This is a special place, but I don’t know what the future holds right now. I can’t really say, especially at this point in time right now in my career. I just don’t know anything. I know this: coming back here these past two years have been tremendous and wonderful for me … I weigh everything, I pretty much weigh everything: family, obviously what the organization says, me personally and how I feel. Obviously, emotionally, you don’t want to try and make any decisions right now at this point in time with the moods that you have. I factor in everything, you know, but we’ll see how it goes.” – Jerricho Cotchery

“I can’t tell who’s going to be here and who’s not just because of the mere fact that things happen.” – Coach Ron Rivera

“We’re going to do everything we can to keep our core together. Absolutely. I mean, we’d be an idiot not to. But, again – listen, tough decisions have to be made. And sometimes you make decisions that you’re sort of forced into because of a variety of factors. We’re going to do our best to keep this team together.” – Dave Gettleman

On the off season

“With the season being over so recently, the guys need to get away, clear their minds. It’s been five extra weeks from normal, when we’re not in playoff season. We got a lot of recovering [to do], gettin’ our bodies back, gettin’ our minds back, before we can start thinking about next year.” – Greg Olsen

“I’m ready for a break from football [rather than teammates], you know. I mean, my teammates is unbelievable, you know, they’ll come visit me wherever I’m at or I’ll go visit them. I’ve got 3 or 4 over there waiting to go into this off season … I mean, it’s more of a break from football and getting more focused on family right now. It’s just time to relax, you know. We’ve had a 28 week season or something like that.” – Charles Johnson

“I feel like I always run into the off season, whether we were 6 and 10 or, now, 17 and 2, I think if [your record] changes how hard you prepare, if that changes how hard, if that’s what it takes to motivate you, I don’t know how much long-term success you’re gonna have in this league. You should be motivated to be the best player on your team that you can be every season. This is your job, this is what you’re paid to do, you have nothing else to do. So I don’t know. For me, whether we won or lost the Super Bowl, starting fresh for next year wasn’t gonna be too much different.” – Greg Olsen

“Because of finishing as late as we did, we are going to start a little bit later. I’m going to eliminate a little bit of time, as far as what the OTAs and what the off season brings. Again, the whole idea is that we’ve had five extra weeks of work. Our young guys have gotten five more weeks that they normally wouldn’t have gotten or may not have gotten. So that, I think, is important. The idea right now in talking with the trainers, the doctors, the strength and conditioning staff, it’s about rest right now … I want to make sure they get the same amount of time off they had last year, so I’m going to try to structure it that way.” – Coach Ron Rivera