Jaycee Horn wants Carolina Panthers’ defense to ‘run it back next year.’ He isn’t alone
Jaycee Horn wasn’t alone when he called last week “bittersweet,” considering it marked the end of the Carolina Panthers’ 2023 season that began with such promise and ended in such tumult.
He wasn’t alone in another feeling, either.
“Hopefully we get a chance to run it back next year,” Horn told The Charlotte Observer on move-out Monday, the day after the team’s 9-0 loss to Tampa Bay that pushed Carolina to 2-15 on the season. “I’m proud I was able to compete with these guys and build the relationships I was able to build.”
Does the bittersweet-ness come from knowing some guys on this defense might not return?
“That, but that’s always a possibility in the NFL,” the team’s top cornerback continued. “But also just not being in the playoffs. Not being able to continue the season when we know we got the guys in the locker room to do that. These guys battled their asses off all year, and I wasn’t out there a lot of the time. I was just watching them, how they fought, and it ending like this is kind of frustrating because I know we had the talent to make it (work). But yeah man, it’s going to work out how it’ll work out.”
Horn wasn’t the only one who would like the Panthers’ defense to return next year. The Panthers’ 2021 first-round pick, who had a stellar end to the season after sustaining a hamstring injury Week 1 that sidelined him until Week 13, shares a similar sentiment as other leaders of the defense. That includes captain and lead pass rusher Brian Burns.
“The core group of guys that’s on this defense, you just can’t separate,” Burns, an unrestricted free agent, told reporters earlier this offseason. “We’ve been together for a while. The camaraderie is amazing. I feel like there is so much more we can tap into as a defense.”
Building Panthers’ defense was a long-term endeavor
Horn’s desire to keep the most valuable players of the Panthers’ defense together makes sense.
After all, the South Carolina star entered the NFL and “grew up,” so to speak, with a lot of those guys around the same time. Horn was one of three-consecutive first-round picks who were defenders for the Panthers, a tactic initially thought of to supplement an offense that, not long ago, had accumulated a bunch of weapons via the draft (think DJ Moore in 2018 and Christian McCaffrey in 2017).
Another reason wanting to keep the Panthers’ best unit together? Carolina’s defense was quite good.
The Panthers, even without Horn and other key players for most of the season, only allowed 293.9 total yards a game (fourth-fewest in the NFL). A lot of that success flowed through a formidable pass defense. The team averaged a 171.5 passing yards against all season — third-most in the league — and only allowed four quarterbacks to throw for more than 200 yards on the year, per Stat Muse. And that’s without mentioning the true strength of Derrick Brown, the Panthers’ defensive lineman who put out a season for the history books and was dubbed internally as the “best run defender in the NFL.”
But the check could come due. Of the Panthers’ 21 unrestricted free agents, 15 are defenders. Burns is one of them, and he hasn’t budged from his preseason stance that he should be paid among the top edge rushers in the league. Linebacker Frankie Luvu is another, and the inside linebacker was about as productive of a player the Panthers had in 2023 — and they had him for a relative bargain as he finished out his two-year, $9 million extension that he signed in 2022.
And whoever the Panthers’ decision-makers are this offseason — the franchise’s vast search for head coach and general manager will likely pick up this week — will have to confront other questions beyond this year. That means considering other defenders whose potential paydays will be coming at the conclusion of 2024, including Brown and Horn. That means weighing the benefits of fortifying an already strong defense versus building a bereft offense (although the quarterback position, at least for the time being, is taken care of).
And that means doing this all with good-but-not-great cap space: The Panthers have approximately $40.4 million in cap space for 2024, according to Sportac as of Monday, and are scheduled to have $172.4 million in cap space in 2025. (The $40.4 million total is 13th in the league in 2024; the $172.4 million total is 11th in the league in 2025.)
Panthers’ top DB choosing to be the ‘best version of myself’
All the discussions about money and the future and the shifting front office didn’t seem to affect Horn too much a week ago.
Horn said he respected Scott Fitterer and acknowledged the general manager’s role in changing his life — Horn was the first draft pick in the former GM’s era — and Horn added he’s “just thankful for him giving me the opportunity, and when I get the chance to talk to him after this, I’m going to let him know that, too.”
But does a new general manager or any other bit of uncertainty add any anxiety to Horn’s offseason?
Not at all, he said.
“As long as there’s green grass out there, I feel like I’m able to play at a high level when I’m out there,” Horn said. “So I’m not really worried about it. Especially in this business, you gotta let the cards, let the chips fall where they may, and just try to do your job, day-in and day-out, whoever is making the decisions.
“It don’t matter to me. I’m just trying to be the best version of myself.”
