Carolina Panthers offseason grades: Why Dan Morgan earns high marks

The Carolina Panthers are ready to make the leap. Obviously the team was bad in 2024, because you don’t find yourself picking inside the top-10 if you’re good — but there was a ton of promise down the back stretch with the team finally finding its groove after the bye week, pushing the Chiefs, Eagles, and Buccaneers into narrow, one-score losses.

Bryce Young is the nucleus of this turnaround. By now his early-season benching has become a constant talking point, because rookie head coach Dave Canales ended making the perfect choice to ground his second-year quarterback and save his career. A confident, playmaking Young emerged at the close of the season to give Panthers fans hope that the franchise is ready to make big strides in 2025.

Did Carolina do enough this offseason to turn that promise into reality? Let’s dive into their report card.

The Panthers staff is more or less identical to 2024, but with two key additions to shore up the worst elements of their defense: AC Carter is now outside linebackers coach, where he’ll be responsible for generating pressure of of their 3-4 defense, and Renaldo Hill joins the staff as the team’s new secondary coach.

Carter spend his time as an assistant with the Rams and garnered a lot of praise for his success on a staff that developed rookie Jared Verse. Meanwhile Hill joins the Panthers from Miami where he helped coach a Top 10 pass defense unit brimming with talent.

These two hired represent the young, dynamic, player-focused staff Carolina has been building under Canales. Neither is particularly remarkable, so it’s more or less business as usual.

Grade: B

Entering 2025 free agency the Panthers didn’t have a lot of money to play with following their spending spree on offensive line the year prior, so they had to make some targeted signings to address their biggest weaknesses.

The biggest splash Carolina made was signing former Raiders safety Tre’Von Moehrig. Moehring is the kind of talent this team needs to solidify a shaky secondary, and give some much-needed leadership. Carolina also added depth on defense with Tershawn Wharton, Pat Jones II, and Bobby Brown III — while also adding some punch to their offense with running back Rico Dowdle.

All in all this was a solid free agency group for the Panthers. Nothing blows you away, but critically the team didn’t break the bank with any deals they’ll regret in the future. Sensible team building won out.

Grade: B

This is where the Panthers shined. Their 2025 class gained a lot of recognition for how the team worked the board while keeps its future draft capital. Tetairoa McMillian was a big of a shocker at No. 8 with most assuming Carolina would aim for pass rush, but the team completely re-shaped it’s pressure in the 2nd and 3rd rounds with Nic Scourton and Princely Umanmielen.

As it stands the first three picks could all be impact starters for Carolina from the jump while the team also found solid rotational talent in later rounds. This has the potential to be one of the best draft classes in Panthers history. Yes, it was that good.

Grade: A+

The goal for the Carolina Panthers this offseason needed to be “stay the course.” Simply build on the path they were on, fix some areas on defense, and hope the trajectory stays. Every decision was done with that in mind, and the organization achieved that.

As it stands the Panthers appear to be one team ready to make a serious leap in 2025, and in a weak NFC South it’s not out of the question that this team could legitimately contend for a conference title, even after being 5-12 a year ago.

This would have been a middle-of-the-road offseason before the NFL Draft, but the work GM Dan Morgan did to find quality players at positions of dire need, without getting antsy and trading away future picks was the absolute perfect approach.

Tentatively the future looks very bright in Carolina, now it’s about seeing if this team can execute.

Grade: A-