‘Night-and-day difference.’ How Panthers’ brass set table for 2026 NFL Draft
Dan Morgan has traded a locker for a spacious office inside Bank of America Stadium, but the former Carolina Panthers standout still has some linebacker to his game. Instead of showing his aggression on the field, the general manager has made headlines with a bevy of notable transactions over the past three offseasons.
After paying eye-opening sums for outside linebacker Jaelan Phillips and inside linebacker Devin Lloyd in free agency, Morgan is preparing for another critical point of the roster-building process, this week’s NFL Draft, with Carolina’s executive vice president of football operations, Brandt Tilis, by his side.
The front office duo has found a rhythm during their two years together, and that cohesion has helped them fine-tune their plans for this offseason following an NFC South division-winning campaign.
And just as Morgan did as a Pro Bowl linebacker in Carolina, he studied the tape, assessed his previous hits and misses and found solutions that ensured the front office would have flexibility entering Thursday’s first round.
“Every year, I should feel more comfortable,” Morgan told The Charlotte Observer last month at the NFL’s annual meeting in Phoenix. “And every year I should be evaluating our processes and talking to my team and figuring out where we were good, where we need to improve. … If we’re not going back, and we’re not evaluating ourselves, and trying to get better at everything that we do, then shame on us. So, as long as I’m here, we’re gonna just try to get better and better every single year.”
Tilis negotiated the deals for Lloyd and Phillips. Those two pacts served as the certain pieces for the Panthers’ plans to get better after making the playoffs for the first time since 2017.
The brass didn’t necessarily do an overhaul of their approach from previous years, but they used the knowledge of their past successes and failures to zero-in on how to approach free agency with bigger expectations, internally and externally.
Morgan and Tilis want to give Panthers head coach Dave Canales the best roster possible, and the duo wasn’t afraid to dissect their previous gaffes to make sure that happened.
“I don’t know that the process has changed, but I think our understanding of what’s working and what’s not working has gotten better, so we have more understanding of that,” Tilis said. “So, we’re looking for play style, right? We’re looking for passion in the game. Love of football — those things. And I think that just flows from what universally works in football, but also what kinds of people we need to bring in that Dave and his staff can get the most out of.”
Behind the scenes on Carolina’s big splash moves
The pathway for long-term success in the NFL isn’t through free agency. Most football execs will acknowledge that openly.
Front offices want to win with the draft first, as developing and retaining talent is paramount for sustained winning, partially because it’s significantly more cost-effective against the salary cap.
The Panthers know this. But they also have the self-awareness to understand that last year’s roster needed to be drastically upgraded at a few key spots, namely inside and outside linebacker.
That’s why they pounced on huge deals for Phillips and Lloyd.
“In a perfect scenario, down the road, we hit on our draft picks, we’re extending our draft picks and not paying free agents,” Morgan said. “But we’re still kind of in that world right now, and hopefully here in the foreseeable future we’ll be paying our draft picks.”
The Panthers made arguably the biggest splash of free agency during the league’s early negotiating window, agreeing to a four-year, $120 million pact with Phillips.
The former Miami Dolphins and Philadelphia Eagles pass rusher had just five sacks last season and 28 sacks during his first five years in the league. He also sustained significant knee and Achilles injuries, which required surgeries, during his first three seasons in Miami.
But Morgan was awed by Phillips’ film and his potential fit in Ejiro Evero’s defense. Phillips is the type of player who can be used all around the formation in a 3-4 front, and he has the versatility the team has been looking for in the position since Evero arrived in town in 2023.
“We felt like having a guy like Jaelen — who can play the run, can rush the passer, he can rush inside, he can rush outside — it just made too much sense for us, and (he’s) not a guy that we wanted to lose out on,” Morgan said.
Last year, the Panthers targeted defensive end Milton Williams and safety Tre’von Moehrig to begin free agency.
They walked away from Williams after his price soared, and the New England Patriots ultimately landed him on a four-year, $103.5 million deal. Carolina then signed Moehrig to a three-year, $51 million deal and pivoted to nose tackle Bobby Brown III and defensive end Turk Wharton.
This year, it was all about Phillips.
“With Jaelen, it was kind of the same idea of, ‘Who are the best players in free agency? Let’s go get them,’” Tilis said. “And we were comfortable with the idea of let’s get Jaelen, and then let’s wait and see what comes out of that. That’s a little different than what we’re doing last year, which was, ‘What can we give Milton and Tre Moehrig and still be solvent?’ And then it just got to be too much for Milton, and we were out.”
Phillips was someone the Panthers were excited about on and off the field, which made landing him critical to the success of the team’s offseason plan. The Panthers see him as a notable culture fit for their overarching program.
“Really good fit — but not only just from a player standpoint — he’s the type of guy that we’re going after,” Morgan said. “Guys that play with a high motor, they love football. So he checked a lot of boxes — if not all the boxes — we were looking for, especially if you’re going to invest that amount of money into somebody.”
After the market reset, Morgan wanted to find a playmaking inside linebacker. That position is important to Morgan, and signing Lloyd to a three-year, $41.9 million contract helped solidify the group.
Lloyd was available in free agency because the Jacksonville Jaguars declined his fifth-year option last offseason after three up-and-down years. The 2022 first-round pick responded with a Pro Bowl campaign in 2025, as he collected five interceptions on the season.
“I think players mature at different rates,” Morgan said. “And I think Devin — I loved him coming out of Utah — but for one reason or another, guys just don’t develop as fast sometimes, and he definitely hit the ground running last year. And everything we saw on tape last year, it gave us no reason to believe that he’s not going to continue to get better and develop.”
Added Morgan: “And then he’s the same type of guy I was talking about before (with Phillips) — is a high-character guy, great teammate, super smart — he’s going to bring not just a lot on the field, but he’s going to bring a lot to our locker room as well.”
Retaining and competing with flexibility
Despite the two massive deals in March, the Panthers didn’t have a lot of cost-cutting to do this offseason.
While the brass still expects to make alterations to their finances this year — likely in the form of contract restructures with the bigger deals on the payroll — they’ve only moved on from a handful of noteworthy talents.
The team cut defensive end A’Shawn Robinson for $10.5 million in cap savings. They also opened up a smidgen of cap space by trading longtime backup quarterback Andy Dalton to the Philadelphia Eagles for a 2027 seventh-round pick.
Otherwise, they’ve largely retained their internal talent. While center Cade Mays and running back Rico Dowdle landed multi-year deals elsewhere, the team has re-signed a dozen internal free agents over the past three months.
Most of those deals have come on one-year pacts.
“We just feel like being able to retain some of our own guys on one-year deals and go outside and get guys on one-year deals — it’s just gonna add depth and competition all over the roster,” Morgan said.
Tilis looks at the stream of re-signings and the lack of excessive departures as a sign of consistency. The Panthers don’t operate like everyone else, but the football exec thinks their approach keeps the operation steady.
“So, I understand other teams do things a little differently, or a lot differently, and I think for me, if I were to do those things, I think we would struggle to maintain consistency,” Tilis said.
One of the stewards of that consistency is football administration coordinator Justin Davidov.
Along with working with the finance department and the league office, Davidov handles the bulk of the team’s contract research and leads some free-agency meetings in the offseason. He also handles a lot of the clerical work with in-season moves.
This offseason, Tilis empowered Davidov to negotiate several contracts. Tilis credits Davidov with the re-signed deals for outside linebackers Trevis Gipson and Thomas Incoom, inside linebacker Claudin Cherelus, safety Nick Scott and cornerback Akayleb Evans.
“We wanted these players back, and they had some stakes,” Tilis said. “And also I provided (Davidov) with some guardrails, so that he wouldn’t go off. And then I also provided some constraints so that he would have to work to find a solution, and he did. He’s very good at it.”
Davidov — who also negotiated the contract for new running back A.J. Dillon — freed up Tilis to find other deals in free agency. The team agreed to pacts with wide receiver John Metchie, center Luke Fortner, quarterback Kenny Pickett and offensive tackle Rasheed Walker during the first week of negotiations.
“We just stuck to our plan,” Tilis said. “And if I was also working on several other deals at the same time, I don’t know that I would have had like the emotional bandwidth to deal with all of that.”
Panthers have ‘night-and-day difference’ with draft outlook
The Panthers enter this week’s draft with plenty of opportunity to improve. There are immediate needs, but there are also holes to fill for the long-term improvement of the squad.
Still, the brass feels — with their free-agency haul — they’ve created a strong core to build around with the incoming draft prospects.
“I think there was a whole rhyme or reason behind everything we did in free agency,” Morgan said. “That way it does set us up truly to be able to draft the best available guys at any given pick.”
The Panthers have seven selections in the draft. Despite picking in the middle of most rounds this year, the brass is hoping their process during free agency will allow them to take advantage of the top talent that falls to them throughout the weekend.
“Way more comfortable this year than two years ago, like night-and-day difference,” Tilis said.
And while the organization understands that picking at No. 19 isn’t ideal for landing an immediate superstar prospect, Morgan and Tilis believe that they’ll still land an impact player in the first round.
“We’re not sitting there at 19 saying like, ‘Damn, I wish we were picking (at) eight,’” Tilis said. “We’re sitting there at 19 saying, ‘We’re gonna get a good player at 19, and he’s gonna help us.’”
That incoming help will be necessary. While the team won the division last year, their 8-9 record was the worst among the playoff bracket.
Morgan and Tilis have frequently preached the desire to ascend and maintain. Adding a couple of future studs for the long haul — like they did last year with wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan and outside linebacker Nic Scourton — could go a long way in accomplishing both benchmarks.
Those additions would also help the duo avoid dishing out big deals to outside suitors in free agency in the future.
