Will Ejiro Evero, rest of Carolina Panthers’ defense stay? Dave Canales seems to hope so
Mike Rucker remembers what went into “being at the bottom” in 2001 and “being at the top two years later,” when the Carolina Panthers made their first Super Bowl appearance in franchise history.
That required holding on to certain household names even as contracts expired. That meant maintaining an identity even as personnel changed.
“How do we find a way to keep guys who are at our core from a value standpoint?” Rucker, the Panthers’ great and since-retired star pass rusher, told The Charlotte Observer on Thursday, a few minutes after head coach Dave Canales and general manager Dan Morgan were officially introduced in their new roles in Bank of America Stadium.
“That’s going to be the challenge,” Rucker said.
The Panthers have a lot of challenges to conquer in 2024. They need to find, recruit and keep “dawgs,” as Morgan expressed Thursday, a sentiment that enjoyed some mild internet virality. They need to unlock Bryce Young.
But on the defensive side — to which Rucker was referring — the challenge will be what players have been saying since the dwindling days of the 2023 season:
Keeping the defense together.
Will Ejiro Evero return to Carolina Panthers?
The Panthers’ defense in 2023 was far from the root of the the team’s 2-15 struggles. The unit allowed on average 293.3 total yards a game — fourth-fewest in the NFL. Derrick Brown had a record-breaking, Pro Bowl year. The unit only allowed four quarterbacks to throw for more than 200 yards on the year, per Stat Muse.
A lot of that success seemed to flow through defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, the Panthers’ defensive coordinator who instituted the team’s new 3-4 scheme with aplomb. Canales is familiar with Evero’s game — Evero stalled the Canales-led Tampa Bay Bucs offense in the NFC South rivals’ two matchups in 2023 — and by the sound of it, he expects Evero back in 2024.
“This is really important for me, especially as a first-time head coach who’s like, I’m here to make sure we get our football right,” Canales said. “(It’s important) especially on the offensive side, that we have that continuity with the players, and with EJ, just being able to have the mentality that I saw that was really challenging to play against.”
When asked to clarify if he expects Evero back, Canales responded: “Yes, this is, for me, a huge piece of what we’re doing.”
Free agency questions on Carolina Panthers’ defense
Should Evero return, it would be promising for the Panthers’ defense. But free agency in March could spell change for the unit.
Brian Burns, the team’s top pass rusher who has earned Pro Bowl distinctions twice in the last three years, still hasn’t negotiated a contract extension with the Panthers, the franchise he’s publicly pronounced his loyalty to.
The Panthers will also need to re-sign Frankie Luvu if they want to keep the prolific inside linebacker around. Similar decisions will need to be made about safety Jeremy Chinn — who told The Observer last month that he’s ready to go “where I’m wanted” — and OLB Marquis Haynes, ILB Kamu Grugier-Hill, CB Troy Hill and OLB Yetur Gross-Matos, who had a career year in 2023, among others.
And that’s all without considering the fates of defensive tackle Derrick Brown and cornerback Jaycee Horn, whose paydays probably aren’t far away, either.
The Panthers have approximately $31 million in cap space for 2024, Sportac showed on Thursday, and $162.2 million in cap space for 2025. (The $31 million total is is 13th in the NFL in 2024; the $162.2 million is 11th in 2025.)
Instead of laying out the offseason plan in detail, Morgan said on Thursday that a lot of those moves will be handled by Brandt Tilis, the lauded Kansas City Chiefs executive the Panthers hired to be Morgan’s right-hand man in salary negotiations and cap calculations.
“To be able to work with him every day and collaborate and talk about the roster and kind of fit all the pieces of the puzzle together, and to have Brandt kind of work side-by-side with him, that’s invaluable,” Morgan said. He then laughed: “I’m super excited that he’s here and I can’t wait until he takes all these coaches’ contracts off my plate, too, because I’ve been having to do that before he got here.”
Canales chimed in: “He’s been crushing it, too, by the way.”
One way to keep doing so? Improve the offense in a way that doesn’t come at the expense of the defense.
Of building what the Panthers began building in 2001.
“The guys that you mentioned” — Rucker said after an Observer reporter mentioned Burns, Luvu, Horn and Brown — “great football players.”
“So now it’s just trying to find, ‘How do we keep them? How do we build around them as our foundation?’”
This story was originally published February 2, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
