Shaq Thompson Has No Use for Fair-Weather Panthers Fans
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Shaq Thompson plays a tough brand of football, so it's not surprising that the former University of Washington linebacker might hear what his NFL critics are saying and bark back at them.
Having just completed his eighth season for the Carolina Panthers, he took to social media on Monday with the following stern directive:
"Fans love the interaction. The real fans I love y'all and thank y'all for the support [for] the team and myself. To the fake ones and the ones that want me 'cut,' remember to keep God in your life and get that hate out [of] your blood. Not doing anything for you in life!"
Thompson probably wrote that message while icing any number of aching body aches and reading someone's suggestion that his time in Charlotte should be done.
For a 7-10 team, the 6-foot, 230-pound Thompson changed things up by swapping out numbers, going from 54 back to his Husky number 7 once the league relaxed its requirements of who could wear what.
He comes off a season in which he piled up a career-best 135 tackles by a wide margin, which is best illustrated in different images in the accompanying photo gallery here:
Yet fans see the losses and the four-year, $54.2 million contract extension he signed in 2019 and they become convinced that money could be spent on multiple players who could help make the franchise a winner again.
It's sort of like what the Seattle Seahawks did a year ago with linebacker Bobby Wagner, by letting him and his salary go as they did a reset.
Certainly Thompson is a battle-worn NFL player for Carolina after appearing in 117 games and starting all but 11 of them.
Yet he's already done one salary restructuring with the Panthers, agreeing to take less money to free up the franchise to add more bodies.
Meantime, he hears the discontent and has no problem shooting it down.
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