The Panthers defense is as healthy and productive as ever

The injury luck has settled out for the moment

The Carolina Panthers had a rough start to their season. 2024 was never planned as a year for this team to contend. It was mainly supposed to be a year where we all got to assess Bryce Young’s future. With that in mind, the Panthers signed enough talent on defense to fill out the roster, but spent most of their free agency money and high draft picks on offensive talent. Stars like Derrick Brown and Shaq Thompson were the only real tools that defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero was given to work with.

Then the team lost Brown to a meniscus injury in the season opener against the New Orleans Saints. Injuries piled up every week from there. Shaq Thompson was lost to a devastating Achilles injury in a Week 4 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. Starting safety Jordan Fuller spent time on injured reserve during this period and then the team lost his replacement, Nick Scott, to injured reserve as well. Josey Jewell, the team’s remaining experienced linebacker, spent several weeks on the sidelines rehabbing a hamstring injury. DJ Wonnum, the outside linebacker projected to start opposite Jadaveon Clowney didn’t make his season debut until Week 10.

One day we’ll look back at this season and do a full accounting of starts lost to injury on the defense, but suffice it to say for now that it is really now wonder this team started the season giving up a score on almost every possession to some of the worst teams in football. That’s what happens when you try to race a pile of spare parts without wheels or an engine.

That is why it is so surprising that the team is now facing down the end of their season, with four games left to play, with a defense that is almost at full strength. Three projected starters from the preseason are absent from the starting lineup today: Brown, Thompson, and cornerback Dane Jackson. Jackson is healthy, he just lost his job to the incredible play of Mike Jackson this season. Gone are the mile long injury reports that dwarfed those of opposing teams. The Panthers defense is as healthy as they have been all season.

Wonnum is back and making everybody else along the front seven look better. The secondary is at full strength and looking competent. It’s not what we expected after how this season began.

For all that we talk about Young’s improvement, which has been stellar, it’s worth noting that the defense is also putting up superlative stats of their own during the Panthers current moral victory streak:

Evero indeed deserves a ton of praise for this. The defense may be healthy, but they were never expected to be competitive even at full strength. If the team can keep him into next year and beyond, then I am looking forward to what he can do with a higher level of talent and another year of consistency and scheme buy-in from the guys he already has.

The future was bleak in the Carolinas just a a few weeks ago, but this team is poised to be a favorite 2025 sleeper pick of pundits across the nation if they keep up this level of play.