‘Not a laughingstock.’ Panthers’ Adam Thielen reacts to national opinion on WRs
The online NFL world has gotten a healthy dose of Carolina Panthers receivers this offseason.
Adam Thielen competed in a celebrity golf tournament and announced there that he wasn’t retiring. Tetairoa McMillan and Jimmy Horn Jr. were drafted and immediately beloved nationally. Xavier Legette has been everywhere — ice level at a Carolina Hurricanes game, in a GloRilla music video, at the Kentucky Derby, on a boat and sorta-kinda in the water.
And this past week, as the Panthers began training camp, they were thrust into the nation’s consciousness again.
This time, courtesy of Chad Johnson.
“Can we talk about the possibility of the Panthers’ trio of receivers being the best in the league with consistency week to week for Bryce Young?” Johnson wrote on X.
Johnson was regularly one of the NFL’s top receivers through the 2000s and is now a league pundit, stirring conversation on various platforms.
And this week, some … well … weren’t ready for this discussion.
So Johnson fired back.
“Do your (expletive) homework,” he replied to one message. “We got T. Mac, Xavier Legette, Jalen Coker, Jimmy Horn and Adam Thielen.”
And then in a later tweet: “Hunter ‘put you in a blender’ Renfrow, too...”
One person who was ready for the discussion, though?
Thielen.
The 34-year-old veteran and Bryce Young’s perennial favorite target couldn’t have agreed more.
“I did see it,” Thielen told reporters Friday. “Ocho (Johnson’s nickname) is my guy. We had a nice conversation last year in Vegas before the game. I can’t remember exactly who was talking about us not being a great group. … I think he started to see in that game, and then obviously at the end of the year, with obviously all the additions in that room what we can do. So it’s always good to see that.”
Thielen said that this group has a lot of things to work on, like every group does at this time of year.
“But it’s good that people see that it’s not just a laughingstock,” Thielen said. “It’s not a group to just look over. But we gotta prove that. We gotta go prove that tomorrow, Week 1 and through the end of the season.”
The Panthers have certainly cultivated some clout this offseason. Most prognosticators aren’t quick to make them favorites for winning the NFC South. But the optimism behind the team is real. And it’s percolated to the team itself. Head coach Dave Canales said Wednesday that “I don’t think people are going to want to play with us.” Chuba Hubbard, over the summer, said that “if the goal isn’t to make the playoffs and win a Super Bowl, you’re selling yourself short.”
Still, even with all this, the receiving room love is different. Young’s first-year demise, in many ways, was chalked up to a bad situation in head coach Frank Reich getting fired and a dearth of talent around him. The team invested in the receiving corps last year to varying avail early but ended strong last year: Ja’Tavion Sanders broke a Panthers rookie tight-end receiving record; Coker broke a Panthers undrafted rookie receiving record; Thielen’s hamstring injury prevented him from back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons — but he was effective nonetheless.
So a jump is expected.
Johnson and undoubtedly other corners of the NFL believe it.
And even if all of it is smoke right now — the attention this room has gotten is real.
Undeniably real.
“I told X this the other day,” Thielen said, referring to a conversation with Legette. “I said, ‘Hey, this summer, I got more questions about you than anything else. Not about my family, about me. Everybody just wanted to know what it’s like working with X. ‘Does he really talk like that?’ He’s definitely blowing up. But it’s not a self-promotional thing. It’s just who he is. And he likes to have fun. And he also is all about the work. …
He continued, talking about Legette but seemingly about everything else, too:
“You can’t just show up to be great because people like you.”
The work continues.
Quick hits
▪ The Panthers have signed rookie cornerback Mello Dotson and waived cornerback MJ Devonshire with an injury designation. Dotson played college football for the Kansas Jayhawks and went undrafted before being picked up by the Las Vegas Raiders earlier this offseason.
