Thomas Davis and Greg Olsen were team guys, always.
And so the fact that they retired together Thursday, signing one-day contracts to officially finish their careers as Carolina Panthers, was altogether fitting.
They shared their big day as they’ve shared their lives, alternating tears and heartfelt speeches while accolades poured in for two of the best to ever wear the Panthers’ uniform.
It was Davis’s suit — custom-made to look like a snazzier version of his No. 58 uniform, down to the yellow “C” denoting him as a captain and his last name emblazoned on the back — that stole the visual show.
“The greatest outfit I’ve ever seen,” Olsen called it.
“My inspiration was I wanted to put the uniform on one last time,” Davis said.
Notwithstanding that bit of tailoring genius, both men took turns in the spotlight Thursday, making sure the other man got his turn, just like they always did.
As players, that’s the way they did it, too. Davis always had Luke Kuechly as a high-profile running mate. Olsen had quarterback Cam Newton. Cam and Luke usually drew the most headlines, but Davis and Olsen didn’t care. They were the consummate teammates.
And then, in our community, they found dozens of more teammates, working to make Charlotte a better place through numerous charitable efforts that were nationally recognized. Davis won the NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year award and then gave one of the finest speeches I’ve ever heard. Olsen should have won it, too, but was a Payton finalist twice.
In a way, this was even better than the normal retirement ceremony, because it allowed both men a chance to talk about each other. They laughed about Davis once hitting Olsen’s mother in the eye with a golf ball and about Davis expressing doubt in Olsen’s speed before he ever met him because, as he said: “Man, that’s a white tight end. Ain’t no way he’s that fast.”
They cried as they talked about their kids. They praised their wives, Kelly Davis and Kara Olsen. And they raved about their adopted city of Charlotte.
“This place, man,” Davis said. “It changed my whole life.”
Said Olsen of Davis: “We didn’t play the same position. We didn’t play on the same side of the ball. We never sat in a meeting together. But what a friendship we formed.”
Davis tore his ACL in the same knee in 2009, 2010 and 2011, and former teammate Jordan Gross said Thursday that he had told Davis to retire after it happened the third time. Davis kept going, though, and made all three of his Pro Bowls after he tore his ACL for the third time.
Olsen, meanwhile, was the first NFL tight end in history to have three straight 1,000-yard receiving seasons and made three Pro Bowls in Carolina, too. The two men combined for 30 years in the NFL all told — 16 for Davis and 14 for Olsen, the majority for each with Carolina (although, in each case, they played their final season elsewhere after a difficult parting with the Panthers).
They starred on the same Panthers teams from 2011-18 and were cornerstones of Carolina’s three straight NFC South championships from 2013-15, including the 2015 run to the Super Bowl. One day, both will be members of the Panthers’ Hall of Honor.
Neither man ever won a Super Bowl ring — “That’s my only real regret,” Davis said — but they did just about everything else there is to do in the game.
In practice, at their peak, watching No. 58 try to guard No. 88 was like watching Kevin Durant and Steph Curry play one-on-one during those years in Golden State. The two men took turns winning, and they razzed each other, but neither of them took plays off. They always cared.
The retirement event occurred March 11th, which happened to be Olsen’s 36th birthday. Davis turns 38 later this month.
Olsen will be an NFL analyst for Fox Sports in 2021 and also plans to happily obsess about coaching his kids’ sports teams. He regretted just one thing about his emotional retirement speech — he entirely forgot to mention Newton.
“That’s haunted me since the second I sat down,” Olsen said an hour later, then going on to praise Newton lavishly in his post-retirement press conference. “He’s the best thing that ever happened to my career,” Olsen said of Newton. He added that he hoped that the quarterback would one day retire as a Panther in a similar ceremony to the one he just experienced.
Davis? The future for the man who played the Super Bowl with a broken arm seems limitless.
“It’s time for you to run for mayor, dog,” former Panthers running back Jonathan Stewart said in one of the many tribute videos the Panthers aired. (Davis said he has no political aspirations but will increase his charitable work).
Both men plan to stick around in the Charlotte community — “forever,” Davis proclaimed. And the city is better for that. They were two of Carolina’s greatest as football players.
But they’ve still lived less than half their actual lives, if they’re lucky.
Let’s look forward to seeing how the second half turns out. Because these two are retired, but they are nowhere close to finished.
