How does Carolina’s new edge defender fit on their defense
After addressing the need for an alpha receiver in round one, the Carolina Panthers move up with the Denver Broncos to select one of the youngest players in the entire draft class, Nic Scourton from Texas A&M.
The 20 year old was a star at Purdue in the 2023 season before transferring to Texas A&M for the 2024 season. Prior to the season, many analysts had him as the number one edge on their pre-season boards, but after putting on weight and playing in the Aggies more read-and-react style defense his production came down from 8 sacks to just 4 in 2024.
The Panthers seem to believe that the upside with Scourton is still there and not many would argue with them. While Scourton’s sack production did drop, he still had a respectable pass rush win rate of 17% (down from 21.2% in 2023), comparable to Donovan Ezeiruaku who accumulated 16.5 sacks with a 18.2% win rate.
The book on Scourton describes a high motor player, who’s youth has not impacted him too much in his college career thus far – even being named a team captain his sophomore year at Purdue. His sack production never eclipsed 8 sacks in a season, but he has amassed a respectable 29 tackles for for loss over the last two seasons.
In the short term, Scourton will likely only be a high effort rotational edge rusher competing with Patrick Jones II for snaps behind Jadeveon Clowney and DJ Wonnum. With impressive performances and some development in curating a pass rush move-set, he could definitely earn more snaps. If the Panthers starting line-up starts getting hit with the injury bug like last year, Scourton doesn’t have any glaring holes in his game that I would be nervous trotting him out there from snap one of a game.
Long-term, Scourton has starting potential with an interesting, yet hard to predict, ceiling. The combination of no available athletic testing and his youthful age, there’s no telling how much he could develop, but double digit sacks aren’t out of the question.
Dan Morgan famously said he was looking for some “dawgs” for the Panthers; it’s safe to say he might have just added another.