2026 Season Opener Countdown: 36 Days Remaining

Here at Cat Scratch Reader we have counted down the final 100 days leading up to the Carolina Panthers season opener by for at least the past ten years. We’ve always done this by highlighting the current player on the roster whose jersey number matches the day on the countdown. This year, we decided to change that up a bit by counting down our own list of the Top 100 Panthers of all time. This does not correspond to jersey number, does not need to be somebody who wore a jersey, and will in no way be controversial.

#36. Brentson Buckner

The Carolina Panthers had one of the most dominant defensive lines of the early 2000s. Spoiler: all four of the starters from that group are going to show up on this list, and we’ve made it to the first one. Brentson Buckner was the fourth of the four horseman, and he thrived in that role.

Buckner came into the NFL from nearby Clemson University via a second round pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was a near immediate impact player there. For reasons I can’t quite figure out, he was traded from the Steelers to the Chiefs but then somehow ended up on the Bengals before the season started. His effectiveness was drastically diminished from his time with the Steelers, and he departed after one season to join the 49ers. There, he started to recapture his old form before signing with the Panthers.

Buckner joined the Panthers at 30 years old and spent the final six years of his career in Carolina. He tallied 14.5 sacks and 25 tackles for loss in those six seasons, forming a dominant front four with Kris Jenkins, Mike Rucker, and Julius Peppers.

He was exactly the kind of player you want at defensive tackle alongside superstars like Kris Jenkins and Julius Peppers. He was ever reliable and brought enough juice as both a run stopper and pass rusher to keep pressure off the bigger names around him. He was an integral part of a dominant Panthers defensive front that helped carry the team to the Super Bowl in 2003, and he contributed 1.5 sacks in the NFC Championship game to help send the Panthers to that Super Bowl.

He was released in 2006, and that ended up marking the end of his playing career. He stayed in Charlotte coaching high school football and cohosting a radio show before getting into coaching at the NFL level. His contributions to what was a sort of golden era of Panthers football lands him at number 36 on the list of top 100 Panthers of all time.