Whispers are connecting the Panthers to a new tackle in the first round of the draft
Jalon Walker, if available, is the assumed selection for the Carolina Panthers at the 8th overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. The team has been connected to a variety of players over the offseason, but the connection to Walker has been the most enduring. Some analysts are treating this pick as one of the few foregone conclusions of an otherwise hard to predict draft. But whispers are rising that the Panthers’ biggest subterfuge of the year has been their interest in Walker as a way of stepping around questions about the future of longtime right tackle Taylor Moton.
Moton is set to play the 2025 season on the last year of his contract with a $31M cap hit. That is the highest cap hit for an offensive lineman in the NFL this season by $4M. The team did not extend him to make more cap space for free agency this year and they have been vague and noncommittal in press conferences about his future.
The team has also shown interest in a handful of offensive tackles projected to be drafted in almost every round, including a couple of first round prospects.
This collection of information is suggestive of multiple things.
One, the Panthers could be preparing to play football in 2025 without their most reliable and longest tenured offensive lineman. That would be a big deal for a team that wants to surround quarterback Bryce Young with stability and talent to, hopefully, prove that he can be the quarterback that he was at the end of last season across an entire season. A first round pick spent on a tackle in this scenario could be a pick well spent.
Two, extending Moton could fit the same timeline of deciding whether or not to pick up left tackle Ikem Ekwonu’s fifth-year option, which is to say it simply became an after the draft priority. For both of them, that could be because their futures with the team are uncertain and the Panthers want to see how the draft falls first.
Three, Dan Morgan is playing 4D chess and trying to lure a tackle hungry team to trade up in the first round either with or ahead of the Panthers. Either trade would expand Carolina’s options at the top of their draft.
Four, it all means nothing together. The Panthers are looking at tackles because tackles are always important. Moton is playing the last year of his contract because he has a recent injury history that, at 31 years old, has driven the two sides negotiating his contract extension too far apart to make a decision on his value until he plays another full season.
We’ll have a better idea what it means when—and if—the Panthers make their pick in the first round of the draft tomorrow night.