NFL coach finally admits what Panthers fans have known for years with telling Derrick Brown comment
The Carolina Panthers have finally earned some league-wide recognition across the roster following the 2025-26 season and now prominent people around the league are fully telling on themselves.
The Carolina Panthers have gotten plenty of love this offseason after the team’s step-forward during the 2025-26 season that included a trip to the NFC playoffs and a NFC South title, something the Panthers haven’t accomplished in the same season since 2015.
It’s still too early to say the Panthers are fully back as a force to be reckoned with in the NFL, but the momentum is certainly building for this team thanks to the elite talent starting to shine through on the roster.
One of those players is defensive tackle Derrick Brown, who reestablished his status as a top player at his position during the 2025-26 season.
Carolina Panthers Derrick Brown ranked in the Top-5 of the NFL’s top interior defensive linemen
ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler released his latest Top-10 positional rankings on Thursday, this time focusing on the interior defensive linemen. The list is voted on by league executives, coaches, and scouts and the Panthers had their highest-ranked player yet in Derrick Brown.
Brown came in as the No. 5 ranked interior defensive linemen with one voter ranking him as high as No. 1 while one voter didn’t even have him ranked. That alone shows the disrespect Brown gets in Carolina and one comment from one NFL assistant coach shows how that feeling extends to not only Brown, but the entire Panthers team.
“We actively ran our running plays completely away from him,” a veteran NFL assistant coach said. “That’s how good he is. The only reason he’s not a household name is that he plays in Carolina.”
Brown earned that Top-5 ranking, and frankly should have been higher. He was arguably the most complete interior defensive lineman in the league last season. He had a league-high 44 defensive stops while adding 5.0 sacks and 39 pressures. The fact someone had him unranked is insane to me and that disrespect clearly dropped him down this list.
And that last comment from the unnamed NFL assistant coach finally admits what Panthers fans have known for years. Real people in the league have deliberately overlooked the great players in Carolina simply because they’re in Carolina. That needs to stop, and thankfully it’s slowly starting to.
Carolina Panthers are slowly earning some respect back in the NFL
After reaching the postseason again for the first time since 2017, the rest of the league is finally starting to pay attention to the Panthers. At the same time, they still aren’t taking this team seriously, and rightfully so. This was still an 8-9 team that only fell backwards into the playoffs because of the horrible division they played in.
However, the Panthers deserve a little more respect than that for the way they played against some of the top teams in the NFC and how they had the Los Angeles Rams on the ropes late in that playoff game. While they need to prove they can take the next step in 2026, that season was enough to earn a little respect around the league.
For example, the Panthers have now had four players made the NFL’s Top-100 players list this offseason (QB Bryce Young, DT Derrick Brown, WR Tetairoa McMillan, and CB Jaycee Horn). That’s the most players the Panthers have had on that annual list, as voted on by the players, since the 2019 season. So far, Brown and Horn were also ranked as Top-10 players at their respective positions on Fowler’s positional rankings.
This team is slowly back on the upswing and it’s ruffling some feathers in the league. Now, it’s up to head coach Dave Canales to really put the Panthers back into the national scene this upcoming season.