If getting a massive payday wasn't good enough, the 2024 season will be defined by what Derrick Brown does for the Carolina Panthers. 

Brown's four-year, $96 million extension is the fourth-highest value among defensive tackles.

However, Eric Edholm with NFL.com believes he will be the team's most valuable player for the 2024 season, ahead of the player who has defined the Panthers' offseason – Bryce Young. 

Edholm acknowledges that a "hopeful" would pick Young as the team's MVP. Carolina did invest in offensive guards Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis. The team also added wide receiver Diontae Johnson and drafted Xavier Legette out of South Carolina. Still, he sees Brown as a bigger difference-maker when the season concludes, which would be the norm based on how the defensive tackle played during the 2023 campaign.

Also feeding into Edholm's selection is he can't envision a Trevor Lawrence-like reinsurance for Young heading into year two. Thus, he landed on Brown, who defined the Panthers' defense during a 2-15 2023 season as a defensive tackle. 

"Brown is understandably an atypical selection based on his position, but when you’re talking about a team coming off a 2-15 season with no established offensive stars, it becomes a little easier to embrace," Edholm writes. "The only two interior defenders who played more snaps than Brown last season were Chris Jones and Christian Wilkins, the NFL’s two highest-paid players at the position."

Brown's 2023 season was record-setting. He posted a defensive lineman-record 103 tackles and led the NFL with a 47% run-stop win rate, according to ESPN Analytics/NFL Next Gen stats.  

Recently, the Pro Bowler was ranked No. 4 on Pro Football Focus' interior defender rankings ahead of the 2024 season. The only names ahead of Brown are Chris Jones, Dexter Lawrence, and Quinnen Williams.

He also has the right mentality to take on the pressure of being Carolina's most important player. 

"I think the message for Derrick is that Derrick is that great guy, and great guys who are talented players who work hard and do things the right way get rewarded," Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero said in April, via the Panthers' website. "And that's exactly what happened. When I think about going back to this time last year when we first got with Derrick, the development that he's had as a player and as a person."

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