No matter the record, players know the NFC South is going to be a fight

Of course, if you’re not down there in the mud with the Panthers and Saints and Falcons and Bucs, it’s easy to laugh. And plenty of people are having their fun with this division at the moment.

But most players take on the insular posture of not worrying about anything beyond the border.

“I don’t care; I don’t care at all,” defensive tackle Derrick Brown said with a dismissive shake of his head. “I don’t know, man. I know a lot of things are said, people who don’t understand it like I do, so I’m not worried about it, to be honest.

“I don’t (hear it). I don’t do social media and all that s—, so I don’t hear it or see it.”

Likewise, quarterback Bryce Young, Mr. Control-What-You-Can-Control, just shrugged when asked about the perception of his division.

“The NFL is the NFL,” he said. “I don’t know what; I haven’t seen or heard all that stuff. Obviously, I understand records and stuff. But again, that’s not for me to comment on or care about. We want to go 1-0 this week. That’s all that matters. That’s our focus.”

Veteran long snapper JJ Jansen knows this better than any of them.

He’s been around this division since 2009, so he’s seen the days when the quarterbacks were Cam Newton and Drew Brees and Matt Ryan and the NFC South had  three 10-plus-win teams at a time (and the Panthers both were and were not one of them at different times). And he’s seen years like 2014 and 2025, when the Panthers won the division with 7-8-1 and 8-9 records. And he was here in 2022, the last time Carolina left the Superdome with a win. And he’s been around for the last five years, when the average difference between first place and third place in the division is 1.6 games, including last year’s three-way tie at 8-9. So he knows it’s usually tight,