The story behind the Carolina Panthers’ stadium mural, and the future it represents

Matt Moore was surveying his nearly finished mural — scanning the dark hues and blemishes and black Panther scowls somewhere in the depths of Bank of America Stadium — when something caught his eye.

A few splatters of white paint.

“Even stuff like this,” he then said, walking up to the wall, circling his hand over the spots that depict a Panthers’ frothed roar. “I didn’t know this was gonna fly.”

He then shrugged.

“And they loved it,” he said.

“They were like, ‘Yeah, no, more of it.’”

“They,” in this instance, were the Carolina Panthers. And “more” referred to the aggression and ferocity Moore was bringing to a mural he’s spent the past month creating before the Panthers’ home-opener on Sunday.

“Every time I thought I was overstepping with the aggression,” Moore said with a chuckle, “they were like, ‘No, push it further.’”

This offseason, the Carolina Panthers commissioned Moore, a lifelong North Carolinian and well-known Charlotte muralist, to bring to life one of the most important strips of hallway in Bank of America Stadium: the tunnel where players and coaches gather before stomping out onto the turf and into battle.

The goal was to create something that the Carolina Panthers’ organization aspires to, according to Moore and brand marketing specialists. The organization landed on painting 11 black Panthers of varying sizes dwelling in what the Panthers’ marketing team considers their “mythical lair” — crushing rocks, spewing venom, exuding ferocity, doing what Panthers in the wild and Panthers on the football field do at their most formidable.

The art starts on the double doors that open up to the team locker room and then winds all the way to the team’s tunnel. It starts with smaller Panthers, and then they progressively get larger, meaner, nastier. The final Panther on one of the walls looks like a carbon copy of one of the Panther statues outside the stadium, one of the most distinguishable parts of Charlotte’s largest venue.

Moore has made a living off of pushing boundaries, presenting his visions via paint. If you’ve visited Charlotte, you’ve seen his art before. He authored the work “Clarity,” a large painting of a woman with wolf eyes on the side of a brick building in NoDa, which can be seen from I-77. He painted the huge half-Panther, half-Luke Kuechly mural on one side of The Brickyard in South End. He painted the blue warriors in the weight room of the Charlotte FC practice facility at McAlpine Park.

This project, though, has been particularly special to him, he said. The 39-year-old Asheville native attended the first Panthers game in Clemson and has been a fan since. Contributing to a place, to a team, that he loves so much is gratifying, he said.

“This one may not be as public,” Moore said. “But it’s going to have — it may be a tiny little fraction of a percentage — but it’s going to have some effect on the guys, you know what I mean?”

His fandom sneaks up on you, kind of like a real Panther does.

“Today I’m going to put a couple scars, a couple slash marks on them,” he explained on Wednesday. He picked up a paint brush, rubbed some paint on his hiking pants and focused on the wall. “Because in my mind, that’s the entire essence of what ‘keep pounding’ means.”

Taking advantage of a ‘realistic’ Panther

For Jaclyn Urda, marketing manager for the Panthers, the mural is exactly what she envisioned when she reached out to Moore.

The two connected over Instagram, hopped on a Zoom call, exchanged ideas that melded the visions of Moore and the Panthers’ brand ethos — and then Moore went to work, executing “exactly what I had in mind,” Urda said.

“As you’re walking through, they get nastier as you go,” Urda said. “So that final one at the very end is representative of the statues out front, which is something that we’ve been really leaning into on the brand side. The indomitable spirit statue.

“So it’s just taking you and encompassing you while you’re walking through this. We are not of one. We are of many. And that is really the main focus. That’s the last thing that we’re going to see before they go out on the field.”

Urda said this mural isn’t the only way the Panthers are trying to capitalize on what she calls the “realistic Panther.” The team is using this motif in marketing campaigns. Spectators will see this theme on LED ribbons outside the stadium. There will be fan activations throughout the year involving something with this idea of the “Panthers lair,” too. (When asked if this new rollout of strategic planning might pave the way for a logo change, Urda replied: “Haven’t gotten that far.”)

‘The live elements of the Panther’

The mural has not only been a hit with the members directly involved with this project. It has also been a hit with coaches and players.

Adam Thielen, the Panthers’ veteran wide receiver, said the first time he passed by the mural he FaceTimed his kids to show them. Safety Xavier Woods noticed the sprawling mural and complimented it, too. Head coach Dave Canales, who will be coaching his first game at home as head coach of the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, said the mural represented something important for the team.

“The mural captures the live elements of the Panther, you know?” Canales said. “The muscles. The full stride. The look in the eyes. And it makes it real.”

Canales then went on to say that the mural is a reminder “for me to just continue to bring out the nature of the Panther” — the aggressive animal this team aspires to be.