Hooked on a Freeling: Panthers get better in trenches with first NFL Draft pick
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- The Carolina Panthers selected Georgia OT Monroe Freeling at #19 in NFL Draft Thursday.
- Freeling (6-7, 315) will be a candidate to start at left tackle as a rookie.
- Ekwonu’s injury in January playoff game means Panthers will have some uncertainty at LT.
The Carolina Panthers made a somewhat boring draft pick in the first round Thursday — but it was the kind of boring draft pick that can pave the way to a lot of very good things.
Monroe Freeling, a monster of a man who was an offensive tackle at the University of Georgia last season, was the Panthers’ pick Thursday night at No. 19. In his first press conference with the Charlotte-area media, Freeling seemed like a big guy (6-foot-7, 315 pounds) with big energy — a steamroller with a lot of steam.
“Keep pounding! Keep pounding! Let’s gooooo!” he yelled, unprompted, at the end of his media session.
Freeling was in Mount Pleasant, S.C., for the draft, just outside of Charleston, at his parents’ house for his draft party. He was thrilled to be starting his NFL career only three hours from home.
Was this the correct pick?
There’s no way to tell this early. I wanted the Panthers to take Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman at 19 if he was there, and he was. Instead, Carolina did something that’s hard to argue with: Bolstering a very important position where a very important player got hurt in January.
Ickey Ekwonu, the Panthers’ starting left tackle, ruptured his patellar tendon in the first quarter of Carolina’s playoff loss to the L.A. Rams. That injury’s recovery timeline has put Ekwonu’s availability in question for some or all of the 2026 season, and the Panthers have been purposely vague about putting any sort of timetable on Ekwonu’s return.
Thus, Carolina addressed the position in free agency with Rasheed Walker and now with Freeling, who will be an immediate candidate to start at left tackle (the position he mostly played in college) if he looks good in training camp and the preseason.
“This is everything I ever wanted,” Freeling said, adding that he hoped to compete for a starting job right away.
Offensive linemen don’t score touchdowns and are challenging to highlight, because most people’s focus is always on the ball rather than on the guy who made the block to spring the ball carrier. But Freeling made his peace with that long ago. He was a large kid and the large ones usually are stuck playing on the offensive or defensive line.
“I’ve been tossed in the line of scrimmage since the day I was born,” Freeling said. “.... Not every little kid wants to play offensive line from the jump. But if you don’t grow a love for it, you’re not going to make it. And so I think I grew a love for a love for dominating the man in front of me.”
Dan Morgan, the Panthers general manager, said Freeling was “the best player on our board” at No. 19 when it was time for Carolina to draft. Describing Freeling, Morgan said: “Big, long, athletic, physical — a guy with high upside that we’re extremely excited about adding him to our room. You know, (I) think he can play left side. He can play (the) right side. He brings a lot of value to us.”
Morgan said he got a text from Panthers QB Bryce Young that said “Let’s go!” Adding another offensive lineman will help Young. This was the third year in a row the Panthers drafted on the offensive side of the ball in the first round — they had drafted wide receivers Tetairoa McMillan (2025) and Xavier Legette (2024) in the first round of the previous two drafts.
Freeling has an older brother, Tristan, who was a 6-4 guard and played basketball at Queens for a while earlier this decade. So his family has a connection to Charlotte, although Freeling didn’t grow up as a fan of the Panthers or any other NFL team.
Like his older brother, Monroe Freeling played basketball in high school and said he thought that helped him play offensive tackle. He noted that playing OT is somewhat like playing defense in basketball, except that you can also use your hands in football.
Speaking of hands, the Panthers kept raving about Freeling’s athleticism, enough so that I asked coach Dave Canales if he might put in a tackle-eligible play so Freeling could catch a ball in the NFL.
“I’ve gotta see what kinds of hands he has,” Canales said. “We could definitely use a big tight end. So if he doesn’t win a (starting tackle) job, he’s going to play in some way shape or form, because he’s just such a talent.”
