Carolina spent big to fix the one thing that held its defense back, and at least one national outlet thinks the bet is central to the season. Sports Illustrated slotted edge rusher Jaelan Phillips as the Panthers’ second-most important player for 2026, a nod that says as much about Carolina’s biggest weakness as it does about Phillips himself. The team signed him in free agency to a four-year, $120 million contract, one of the marquee pass-rush additions of the offseason.
The reasoning starts with what Carolina lacked. The Panthers leaned on a strong secondary in 2025 while generating almost nothing up front, posting a 34 percent pass-rush win rate and a 21.4 percent pressure rate that ranked dead last in the league. Their defense finished 16th overall, 20th against the run and 15th against the pass, numbers that point to a unit propped up by coverage while the front produced little. As SI framed it, “You can get away with almost anything if you’ve got a good rush,” and Carolina simply did not have one.
Phillips is the answer they paid for. The 18th overall pick by Miami in 2021 out of the U, he has 28 career sacks, 205 tackles, 32 tackles for loss and 11 passes defended across 63 games. The caveat is durability. An Achilles tear in 2023 and an ACL tear in 2024 limited him to 12 games over two seasons, though he was productive when healthy. After a 2025 deadline trade sent him to Philadelphia, he hit free agency and Carolina moved quickly.
The context around the signing explains the urgency. Carolina went 8-9 in 2025, below .500 for an eighth straight year, yet that was enough to win the NFC South for the first time since 2015. The division title followed a brutal two-year stretch in which the Panthers went a combined 7-27 across 2023 and 2024.
