Ron Rivera Says He Felt 'Disrespected' by Week 1 Road Matchup vs. Broncos

The Carolina Panthers are just two days away from their Week 2 matchup against the San Francisco 49ers, which is also the defending NFC champions' home opener. But head coach Ron Rivera is still talking about his team's Week 1 season-opening loss at the Denver Broncos.

On Friday, Rivera told reporters he felt "disrespected" his team had to open up the season on the road against the team that beat them in Super Bowl 50, according to David Newton of ESPN.com:

"

Forget the fact that you're the defending NFC champs and you deserve to open up at home in front of your home crowd on opening week. We're going to make you guys relive it for five more months. That's how I felt.

So for the next five months I've got to put up with it, deal with it, answer the questions and relive it constantly over and over and over. Honestly, it became a pain in the ass.

"

After dropping Super Bowl 50, 24-10, the Panthers followed it up with a 21-20 loss in Denver in Week 1 when Graham Gano missed a 50-yard field-goal attempt in the game's final seconds.

The Panthers already have the same number of regular-season losses as they had all of last season after they put together a 15-1 record in 2015.

For Rivera, it was as though the league didn't care to give the Panthers any credit for putting together just the sixth 15-1 regular season in NFL history:

"

There are so many things they could have done to honor us and honor our team, our fans and our city that I thought this would have been a great opportunity to show it. I feel like we were robbed of that. We had to wait a whole week to do it. You can tell, I'm disappointed it didn't work out that way.

"

The last time a team that participated in a Super Bowl opened up the following season on the road was in 2013 when the defending champion Baltimore Ravens traveled to Denver to take on the Broncos. The Ravens wound up losing 49-27.

While Rivera and his team might not be feeling the love from the league, they'll get a lot of it Sunday as they try to avoid an 0-2 start.

Stats courtesy of Pro-Football-Reference.com.