Nearly seven months to the day the Carolina Panthers' best-ever season ended with heartbreak, they'll get a chance to start off a new year against the team who beat them in Super Bowl 50.

The Panthers will kick off the 2016 season against the Broncos in Denver. The rematch will kick off at 8:30 p.m. Thurs., Sept. 8 on NBC.

The NFL started its Thursday Night Kickoff tradition in 2002, and the defending Super Bowl champs have hosted every year since 2004. This will be the first time the opener has featured a Super Bowl rematch. It's just the seventh time teams who met in the Super Bowl played each other the next season.

Earlier this week, the feeling inside the building was the league had opted to pit the Broncos against another opponent. Instead, the Panthers will begin 2016 with one of their four cross-country trips.

Five months before the rematch, some players have already started yapping ... sorta.

Broncos receiver Emmanuel Sanders posted this after he found out about the schedule:

And later, Panthers quarterback Cam Newton responded to the jab thrown Wednesday by Super Bowl MVP Von Miller: