‘A new era’ begins for Panthers. Fans see it in Bryce Young, Frank Reich, everywhere

Byron Medina lounged on a grassy hill and tried to calculate the last time he was here — at Wofford College, around this time in the summer, taking stock of the future of his favorite team.

“This was like 2006 or 2007,” Medina said, wincing his eyes in deep thought.

He then shrugged and gave up racking his brain for an actual date: “Man, just know Jake Delhomme was QB last time I was here.”

Medina, now 31 and a project manager for a construction company, was younger then. His Independence High School football days were in front of him instead of behind him, and he didn’t yet have a son, Matteo, who spent a lot of Wednesday hiding from the sun underneath a tree.

Why had Medina come back?

“To get that first-hand experience,” the Charlotte resident said, “to see if it’s worth paying the tickets later on.”

But why now?

“Just because it’s a whole new coaching staff, rookie quarterback,” he said with an easy smile. “We haven’t had a guy like this since Cam Newton, and I never really got the chance to come and watch Cam.

“It’s just something to look forward to.”

Wednesday might not have been the start of the 2023 season for the Carolina Panthers. That won’t come until Week 1, when they travel to Atlanta to take on their divisional rival.

But for the fans of this franchise — particularly the ones in Spartanburg on Wednesday for Day 1 of training camp — something began.

There was a young, promising, smiley quarterback in Bryce Young. There was a new, veteran coach with ties to the team’s origins in Frank Reich. There was an in-his-prime but newly numbered and rejuvenated pass-rusher in Brian Burns.

Everything, fans said, looked new.

“It’s a new era for the Panthers,” Daniel Stein, another fan, said. “And it comes at the right time.”

Like Medina — and probably all of the hundreds of fans braving the Spartanburg sun on Wednesday — Stein has been a Panthers fan for a long time.

He grew up in Spartanburg, went to Spartanburg High before going to the University of South Carolina and said he’s come to his fair share of training camps over the years — this being one of the first times he’s had to call off work to do so.

He remembers working for the Panthers during these weeks when he was a junior in high school, in 2014, and marveling at how massive Greg Olsen was up close. He loves seeing the Panthers — his team — walking around his community, living “semi-normal lives” in town, embarking on something new but also clinging to one of the team’s longest traditions.

“I think it means a lot,” he said of the team staying in Spartanburg for training camp. “It’s tradition.”

Tradition was wherever Wednesday. New ones on the field, perhaps — like a connection between Young and DJ Chark for what would’ve been a touchdown — as well as ones that appeared old in the stands.

One couple watched as their four young children crawled and played around in the grass, untired by the sun. Each kid wore a jersey of a former first-round Panthers draft pick: two Christian McCaffreys, one Jaycee Horn and one Bryce Young. Another family saw a kid waiting to give a SpiderMan comic book to Burns, a renowned superfan of the superhero.

Teaghen McLaughlin, who just turned 18 and is headed to Alabama for college in the fall, wore a Young jersey and an Alabama bucket hat and reminisced on a tradition.

“Whenever we’re with our family over Christmas, everybody’s Panthers fans, so we’ll watch the games together,” McLaughlin said.

His parents met in Charlotte in the early ’90s, just as the Panthers franchise began, and he’s been a fan all his life. He thinks this year could be the year Burns becomes a Top 5 pass rusher. (“I just got my jersey yesterday,” he quipped. “It’s in the bag.”) He thinks Young is ready because of Alabama’s pro-style offense. He thinks Reich could one day lead this team to a Super Bowl.

Thus shows another tradition of training camp: seeing the positive possibilities of the future.

Fans of all generations and of all walks of life and of both Carolinas saw these possibilities on Wednesday.

They saw something more, too.

“With all the Cam (Newton) jerseys and the (Luke) Kuechlys and the (Julius) Pepperses in the crowd, it’s great to see,” Stein said of the fan base’s embrace of the Panthers’ past.

He then pointed at the new No. 9 jersey he was wearing: “But we got a new era now with the Bryce Youngs.”

More training camp reading:

▪ ‘Yes, he’s QB1’: Panthers top pick Bryce Young shines in first training camp session

▪ ‘I need to be here’: Brian Burns on why he’s at Panthers training camp during contract talks

▪ Exclusive: Hall of Fame GM Bill Polian on pros, cons of rookie Panthers QB Bryce Young

▪ Panthers training camp takeaways: Jaycee Horn ‘ready to go’, Bryce Young praises Andy Dalton

▪ Bryce Young needs a secret weapon for Panthers. A fellow rookie could fill that role