The Panthers have selected offensive tackle Monroe Freeling with the No. 19 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.
Freeling played his college ball at Georgia. He started 18 games at left tackle in his career, including the final five games of the 2024 season and 13 contests in 2025.
He was a second-team All-SEC honoree last season.
The Panthers had a need at offensive tackle with Ikem Ekwonu suffering a ruptured patellar tendon in the club’s playoff loss. Now Freeling can be a candidate to replace Ekwonu while he heals.
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There’s been speculation in recent weeks about the Panthers using their first-round pick on a wide receiver and they’d be hoping for the same kind of results they got when they added a wideout at the top of the draft in 2025.
Tetairoa McMillan was named the offensive rookie of the year after catching 70 passes for 1,014 yards and seven touchdowns. A repeat of that production would be welcome in Carolina, but the wideout believes there’s room for more.
McMillan said this week that he lost weight over the course of his rookie season, but has added about 10-15 pounds this offseason to get closer to his college weight.
“I wasn’t used to playing that small, I felt pretty weak,” McMillan said, via the team’s website. “I didn’t have my power back, so that was pretty much the main focus this offseason for me.”
McMillan said he believes that change “allows me to be faster, stronger” than he was last season and that prospect should be a pleasant one for the Panthers regardless of what they do on Thursday night.
The Panthers couldn’t snap their streak of losing records last season, but the year still marked a step forward for the franchise.
Carolina’s 8-9 record was good enough to make them the NFC South champions and put them in the playoffs for the first time since the 2017 season. They were knocked out of the postseason by a Rams touchdown in the final minute of a wild fourth quarter and that performance provided more reason to believe in the Panthers as a team on the rise heading into 2026.
Quarterback Bryce Young didn’t take any issue with that assessment on Tuesday, but he did say that it is important for the team to remember that last year’s results don’t provide any guarantees that the team will continue to follow the same path.
“Obviously, we want to make sure that we can be consistent with some of the positives from last year, but also we understand that last year was last year,” Young said, via the team’s website. “This is a new season. We all start 0-0. There’s no carryover; we’re not entitled to anything, so I’m super grateful for that being our mindset as a team. Everyone knows we can’t take our foot off the gas. We have to work just as hard, if not harder, as we have these last few years. Everything’s earned, and now it’s not the time to be thinking about records or anything like that. It’s just about the work. Coach talks about that in the meetings. Now is just the time to win every single day, capture our best, so we’re focused on that.”
Young’s position puts him in a leadership role and the message is likely one that fits Panthers head coach Dave Canales’s desired mindset for the team. Canales said in February that he wanted to see Young “continue to grow in the ownership” of the team’s offense. Young said his offseason focus has been on that “mastery” of the scheme and on-field evidence of it will help ensure the Panthers don’t take a step backward this year.
In 2019, quarterback Will Grier arrived in Carolina as a third-round drdaft pick. Now he’s returning to the Panthers as a free agent signing.
Grier will sign with the Panthers, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN. It will be Grier’s second stint in Carolina, where he spent two seasons but didn’t do much. His only regular-season action came in the last two games of his rookie year, both of which were ugly performances in blowout losses.
Those are still the only two regular-season games Grier has played, but he has managed to stick around in the NFL as a backup. He has spent time mostly with the Cowboys but also had brief stays on the Bengals, Patriots, Chargers and Eagles.
Grier is the third quarterback on the Panthers’ roster, and he’ll join a quarterback room that also features starter Bryce Young and backup Kenny Pickett.
The 31-year-old Grier was born and raised in the Charlotte suburbs, and after a journey that has seen him hold clipboards around the NFL, now he’s getting a homecoming.
The start of the Panthers’ offseason program marked the official return to the roster for wide receivers Jalen Coker and Brycen Tremayne.
Coker and Tremayne both signed their exclusive rights free agent tender offers on Monday. Both players were barred from negotiating with other teams once the Panthers tendered them, so their return was all but certain well before the deals were formally finalized.
Coker had 33 catches for 394 yards and three touchdowns in 11 regular season appearances last season. He also had nine catches for 134 yards and a score in the team’s playoff loss to the Rams.
Tremayne had 14 catches for 160 yards in 16 games last season. He also made 15 tackles on special teams.
The NFL has announced the names of the current and former players that will take part in next week’s draft by announcing second-round picks.
The list includes players associated with all 32 teams, including Cardinals running back James Conner. Conner has strong ties to the Pittsburgh area after playing for the Steelers and attending Pitt, which likely made him an easy choice as the Cardinals’ representative.
Former Bears tackle Jimbo Covert, former Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett, former Chiefs defensive lineman Bill Maas, current Vikings tackle Brian O’Neill, former Jets running back Curtis Martin, and former 49ers punter Andy Lee are other Pitt alums who are set to take part.
The hometown team will be represented by four players. Former Steelers Jerome Bettis and John Stallworth will be joined by Joey Porter Sr. and Jr. next Friday.
The other players taking part and their team affiliations appear below:
Falcons: Michael Turner
Ravens: Mark Ingram
Bills: Shane Conlan
Panthers: Jake Delhomme
Bengals: Ken Anderson
Browns: Phil Dawson
Cowboys: Drew Pearson
Broncos: T.J. Ward
Lions: Calvin Johnson
Packers: John Kuhn
Texans: Billy Miller
Colts: Pat McAfee
Jaguars: Paul Posluszny
Raiders: Matt Millen
Chargers: Shawne Merriman
Rams: Tavon Austin
Dolphins: Dwight Stephenson
Patriots: Deion Branch
Saints: Marques Colston
Giants: Osi Umenyiora
Eagles: Brian Westbrook
Seahawks: Cliff Avril
Buccaneers: Ronde Barber
Titans: Jeffery Simmons
Commanders: Mark Rypien
The Panthers visited with some of the top wide receiver prospects in this year’s draft class and those meetings have led to questions about whether they will actually use a first-round pick on a wideout for the third straight season.
Panthers General Manager Dan Morgan fielded that exact query at a Tuesday press conference. Morgan took Xavier Legette in 2024 and offensive rookie of the year Tetairoa McMillan was last year’s top pick, but Morgan said that their presence isn’t going to keep Carolina from tripling down if the board falls that way at No. 19.
“No. I think with anything, we’re going to take the best player,” Morgan said, via the team’s website. “So if the best player we feel is that at 19, I wouldn’t hesitate to draft another wideout. I don’t think there’s a rule that says you can’t draft a wide receiver three years in a row. So I’m not really going to box us in and say we’re not going to draft him.”
Morgan is correct about the lack of a rule prohibiting the use of three straight first-round picks on receivers. The Lions did it with Charles Rogers, Roy Williams and Mike Williams from 2003-2005 and went 16-32 over those seasons. They then went back to the well in 2007 to take Calvin Johnson in a move that worked out far better than the previous three choices.
The Lions’ history is unlikely to have much bearing on Morgan’s ultimate decision, especially if there’s a player available that the Panthers believe will help quarterback Bryce Young continue to ascend in his third season.
The Panthers indicated back in January that they were planning on exercising quarterback Bryce Young’s fifth-year option for 2027 this spring.
While that hasn’t happened quite yet, General Manager Dan Morgan said on Tuesday that it will occur soon.
“Once the draft’s over, we’ll definitely get that going,” Morgan said in his press conference. “Obviously, the player’s not in the building yet. … We’ll get that done as soon as he gets back in the building.”
Carolina’s offseason program begins next week on Monday, April 20. With the draft beginning next Thursday, it stands to reason that the Panthers will officially pick up Young’s option within the next two weeks.
Based on his playing time, Young is projected to earn $25.904 million guaranteed on the fifth-year option in 2027. Beyond that, it’s unclear what kind of long-term deal Young could command.
Young helped lead the Panthers to the postseason for the first time in his career in 2025, completing 63.6 percent of his passes for 3,011 yards with 23 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He finished the postseason loss to the Rams 21-of-40 for 264 yards with one TD and one pick.
The Panthers are meeting with another one of the draft’s top wide receivers on Thursday.
Field Yates of ESPN reports that they have Denzel Boston in for a visit. Former Indiana wideout Omar Cooper Jr. also visited with the team this week while Boston has met with a number of teams while making the pre-draft rounds.
Boston caught 125 passes for 1,715 yards and 20 touchdowns while playing for Jedd Fisch at Washington the last two seasons. Carolina’s 2025 first-round pick Tetairoa McMillan also played for Fisch for two seasons when Fisch was the head coach at Arizona. Fisch and Panthers head coach Dave Canales were also on the same Seahawks staff in 2010.
The Panthers also took Xavier Legette in the first round in 2024 and the team has never selected wideouts in the first round in three straight drafts.
Having won the CFP National Championship with Indiana in January, running back Kaelon Black has a busy pre-draft schedule.
Black has several teams on his list for pre-draft, top 30 visits, including the Jets, Broncos, Panthers, Colts, Texans, Dolphins, Packers, Vikings, Patriots, and Raiders, a source with knowledge of the situation tells PFT.
He may also meet with the Bengals.
Black played under head coach Curt Cignetti at James Madison for two years before transferring to follow Cignetti to Indiana in 2024.
He rushed for 251 yards for Indiana in 2024 before becoming one of the Hoosiers’ two 1,000-yard backs in 2025, finishing the season with 1,040 yards and 10 touchdowns. He also caught four passes for 36 yards.
