Raise your hand if you know who Kaelin Clay and Brenton Bersin and Mose Frazier are.
OK, we see you Ron Rivera, you can put your hand down. The rest of you, of course, can be excused for not knowing the Panthers wide receivers at the moment. Other than Devin Funchess, there’s not a household name among them (such that Funchess is). Their second-best known wideout is Russell Shepard, which says plenty.
After a season full of injuries and trades and general upheaval, the Panthers are again left with an odd lot of wide receivers, and they’re fine with that.
“We definitely are misfits,” Clay said, via Jourdan Rodrigue of the Charlotte Observer. “A lot of us are looked down upon, or nobody really wanted. We take it, and we love it. . . . A lot of us were no-names coming out, or we still are. But we love it, we love the role that we play on this team. We like being the underdogs.”
Clay was actually unwanted by the Panthers at one point this year, traded to Buffalo before the first game, and then brought back when Damiere Byrd (who of course you haven’t heard of either) was injured the first time.
Frazier was a former walk-on at Memphis and was just promoted from the practice squad, and Bersin has been hanging around the Panthers for five years (which of course has nothing to do with the fact he’s Jerry Richardson’s neighbor and is only because he’s a valuable contributor).
Beyond Funchess, the lot of them have combined for 82 NFL catches, but quarterback Cam Newton professes confidence in them anyway.
“Ever since I’ve been here, the outside world is telling me I’ve been having a lot of people that a lot of people don’t know,” Newton said. “So this is nothing new to me. You’ve got a lot of hungry guys in that receiver room right now ready to prove themselves – proving it to the outside world, rather than proving it to themselves and this team, is more important.”
The Panthers have been in this situation before.
They went 15-1 and made the Super Bowl with the league’s highest-scoring offense two years ago, when a rookie Funchess and Ted Ginn and Jericho Cotchery were the leading targets. Granted, that group was more experienced than this one, but they have always been able to adjust on the fly.
As long as tight end Greg Olsen and running back Christian McCaffrey are well, the Panthers have some reliable targets on the field. Even if no one has any idea who those guys running around on the outside are.
