Panthers star Jadeveon Clowney doesn’t just like ‘prove it’ contracts. He loves them
Jadeveon Clowney admits there was a bit of relief when he signed a two-year deal with the Carolina Panthers, the NFL team that’s just up the road from his Rock Hill, S.C., hometown.
But the relief isn’t a product of being locked into the league for two more years, necessarily.
In the star pass rusher’s words, every year is a contract year.
“Let me just say this: Every contract to me is year-to-year,” Clowney said. “Anything can happen.”
The three-time Pro Bowler and former overall No. 1 pick told reporters this after the team’s first session of mandatory minicamp on Tuesday afternoon, nearly three months after it was announced he’d signed with the Panthers on a two-year deal worth up to $24 million.
The signing was huge for Carolina, which needed to replenish some star power on defense and add some playmakers in a pass rush that had badly atrophied in free agency. On top of that, Clowney was fresh off a redemptive year in Baltimore, where he notched a career-high 9.5 sacks in 17 games and added two forced fumbles in the process.
But the deal was uniquely compelling on Clowney’s side, too. His signing with Carolina marked the first multi-year deal since he signed his rookie contract with the Houston Texans. Come this season, he’ll have been rostered on six different teams in 11 years.
But when asked about the year-to-year ringer he’s been in throughout his career — and whether a longer contract in Carolina changes anything — the 6-foot-5, 267-pound South Carolina Gamecock legend mustered a smile and offered a polite shrug:
“I say it’s one year,” he said.
“I don’t want to get out of the league,” Clowney continued. “So one of my things is, I’m working on next year’s contract. Every year I sign, I work for the next year. I don’t work for the year I got paid. I work for the next year after that.”
He added: “I knew how good I was over the years. I just never was healthy to prove it a lot of times. When I did start hot, I would then get hurt the next three or four games or something. But I just stayed grinding, stayed working. ... The work ethic, conditioning, caught up to me, staying on the field and paying off. And I hope it continues this year.”
That mindset is revealing. It also suits the relentless defensive end, who at 31 years old has been in the football nation’s consciousness since his days wearing a red No. 7 jersey — the same number he’s wearing now — and bullying through people at South Pointe High School in his hometown.
It also tends to seep into everything else he does. Take his explanation for his absences during OTAs, an optional part of the team’s offseason programming: He was working out with a trainer he’s worked with for years in Houston, doing work that made the mandatory minicamp work look “easy.”
Or take his explanation for what has made him among the best-run stoppers in the league, in his own words.
“It’s a mindset,” Clowney said of stopping the run. “I’m not going to let nobody run the ball on me, knock me off the ball. I refuse to do that. I don’t think it’s really happened all that much throughout my career. You can ask all them tight ends or whoever else was asked to block me, they never really said my name.
“But it’s a mindset. Like I tell them, it’s a mindset to stop the run. The pass rush might be a technique-thing, learning a skillset. But the run game is all a mindset. And I got a mindset that says ‘I ain’t gonna let that happen.’”
That mindset is part of the coaching staff’s vision, Canales said — one that will get more and more refined as the preseason approaches. It helps, too, that the 3-4 scheme defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero employs is “similar” to what Clowney flourished in with the Texans.
“That’s the vision, right?” Canales said. “It’s to have him in here and be the destructive football player that we know he is. ... The way that we see it, if we teach good football, if our Xs and Os are right, when we add these premier players into the mix, it just really accentuates all of it and really makes it dangerous.
“And to your point, those outside rushers are an important part of what we do.”
Clowney agreed. He said he looks forward to seeing what Evero “gets out of me” and that he has a lot to show in Charlotte. He has two years to do so, yes.
To Clowney, though, his prove-it year has already started.
This story was originally published June 12, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
