Panthers Clips
The Steelers have added another name to the list of candidates to succeed Mike Tomlin as their head coach.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that they have requested an interview with Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero.
Evero has spent the last three seasons running the defense for Carolina and he was the Broncos’ coordinator in 2022. His name has come up in conjunction with several head coaching searches in recent seasons, including those being conducted by the Falcons and Raiders this month.
The Steelers have requested interviews with a number of coaches since Tomlin stepped down earlier this week. Team owner Art Rooney II said on Wednesday that he will not be putting an exact time frame on how long he’d like the process to take.
The NFL previously applied the term “super” to the wild-card round of the playoffs. This year, the ratings were.
Via Sports Business Journal, the six games televised by Fox (which had two), CBS, Prime Video, NBC and ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 attracted an average of 31.9 million viewers.
That’s a 13-percent increase from last year, and the best since the NFL expanded the playoffs from six teams to seven in 2020, which grew the wild-card round from four games to six.
The total average is the best since the four-game format attracted an average of 32.6 million in 2016 for these games: Raiders-Texans, Lions-Seahawks, Dolphins-Steelers, and Packers-Giants. The smallest victory margin that year was 13 points, with an average score of 30-11.
This year, four of the games went down to the wire. Two of the games were lopsided.
Usually, the first game of wild-card weekend is expected to be a clunker, relative to the rest of the slate. This year, Rams-Panthers was anything but.
The 34-31 shootout, with four leads changes in the fourth quarter alone, racked up 28 million viewers on Fox. It was a seven-percent bump over last year’s early Saturday wild-card game between the Chargers and Texans on CBS and Nickelodeon, and the biggest audience for the Saturday afternoon wild-card game since Saints-Seahawks in January 2011.
The quality of the Rams-Panthers game helped overcome the reality that the Panthers were viewed as playoffs ratings poison, with an 8-9 record and a division title earned with a Week 18 loss followed by the Falcons beating the Saints the next day.
If the game had gone like last year’s 32-12 win by Houston over L.A., the number for Rams-Panthers likely would have been a lot lower.
Bryce Young is set for at least two more years with the Panthers.
Young is heading into his fourth season and General Manager Dan Morgan told reporters on Tuesday that the team plans to exercise their option on the quarterback’s contract for the 2027 season. The salary for that option year is expected to be around $26.5 million and it will be fully guaranteed once it is officially exercised.
The prospect of the Panthers picking up Young’s option seemed unlikely when he was benched early in the 2024 season, but he showed clear improvement once he returned to the lineup after Andy Dalton’s injury and he showed more progress while helping the Panthers to the NFC South title in 2025.
There was still enough inconsistency to fuel doubts about whether Young will become the kind of star that the Panthers hoped to land with the first overall pick in 2023, but picking up the option gives Young time to show that he can reach that level in Carolina.
Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero is getting looks as a head coaching candidate from multiple teams, but his current employer wants to hold onto him.
Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports that the Falcons have requested an interview with Evero. The Raiders also put in a request to speak to him on Sunday.
Evero finished his third season with the Panthers on Saturday and head coach Dave Canales said on Sunday that he “absolutely” wants Evero to remain on the staff in Carolina.
“I have complete trust in Ejiro,” Canales said, via the team’s website. “Love the way that he’s brought this group to play quality football together, and he’s got my full support. Love our scheme, love what we do there, and getting our guys to play together when we execute this scheme, it’s really difficult to play against, and the guys have found a way to play together, communicate together.”
Evero will be able to have a virtual interview with the Falcons, Raiders and any other interested teams this week. Any in-person interviews for coaches currently employed by other teams will not happen until after the divisional round of the playoffs.
The Raiders have added Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero to their list of head coaching candidates.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that they have requested an interview with Evero. The Panthers lost to the Rams on Saturday, so Evero is now free for a remote first interview this week and for a second, in-person interview after the divisional round.
Evero has been the coordinator in Carolina since the 2023 season and helped them go from allowing an NFL-record 534 points in 2024 to allowing 380 en route to the playoffs this season. Evero, who has been involved in other head coaching searches in recent years, has also worked with the Broncos, Rams, 49ers, and Buccaneers.
The Raiders fired Pete Carroll after one season and they are looking for their fifth permanent head coach since the start of the 2021 season.
The Panthers are feeling excited about what they can do in 2026 after returning to the playoffs this season, but running back Rico Dowdle may not be back for another year in Charlotte.
Dowdle signed a one-year deal with the Panthers as a free agent in the offseason and opened the year behind Chuba Hubbard in the backfield pecking order. He put up 473 yards from scrimmage when Hubbard missed time with an injury in October, but saw his usage fluctuate over the rest of the season. In Saturday’s loss to the Rams, Dowdle had five carries for nine yards while Hubbard had 13 carries for 46 yards and two touchdowns.
On Sunday, Dowdle said that his projected role is going to be a significant consideration when it comes to where he plays next season.
“That definitely is a factor,’' Dowdle said, via David Newton of ESPN.com. “There’s options for me. I just want to be a guy who can go out there and just get the bulk.”
Dowdle finished the season with 236 carries for 1,076 yards and six touchdowns. It was his second straight 1,000-yard season and it sounds like he may be going for three in a row for three different teams.
Panthers left tackle Ikem Ekwonu played only eight snaps in Saturday’s wild-card playoff loss to the Rams. He could miss more time to start the 2026 season.
Ekwonu underwent an MRI on his right knee on Sunday, and it showed a ruptured patellar tendon, Adam Schefter of ESPN reports.
The injury will require surgery, and it threatens his availability for regular-season games next season.
Head coach Dave Canales called the injury “significant” in his postgame news conference.
Veteran Yosh Nijman replaced Ekwonu.
Ekwonu missed the game against the Buccaneers on Dec. 21 with a knee issue. He missed the season opener while recovering from a preseason appendectomy.
The Panthers exercised the fifth-year option on Ekwonu’s contract for the 2026 season.
The Panthers couldn’t hold onto a late lead against the Rams, so their season came to an end with a 34-31 home loss on Saturday.
While that was a painful way to go out, the mood in the Panthers locker room was not totally dejected. The team finished 2-15 in 2023 and went 5-12 in 2024 before winning the division with an 8-9 record this year.
A losing record isn’t the sign of a total breakout, but head coach Dave Canales said that the season has been about creating the belief that the Panthers “belong in these games” and defensive lineman Derrick Brown said that the experience has led to different expectations for 2026.
“We want the message to be, man, this is the standard now,” Brown said, via the team’s website. “We want to play playoff football here. We want the Bank to be sold out every weekend, and you know we got to give them a show if that’s what we want.”
The growth the Panthers showed in 2025 isn’t guaranteed to continue next season, so the Panthers can’t afford to rest on their laurels once they get back to work on taking the next step up the NFL ladder.
Matthew Stafford’s Saturday started with him being named a first-team All-Pro and he closed it with the kind of performance that showed why he’s a frontrunner for the NFL’s biggest award.
With the Rams down 31-27 late in the fourth quarter, Stafford went 6-of-7 for 71 yards on a go-ahead touchdown drive. The final throw of the drive was a 19-yard dart to tight end Colby Parkinson and Parkinson made a twisting catch while falling into the end zone.
After the game, wide receiver Davante Adams said Stafford started the final drive by telling the offense “let’s go snatch these guys’ hearts.”
“That was pretty cold, just to hear that,” Adams said, via the team’s website. “And I actually literally smiled in the moment, because I thought that was like one of the most gangster things you could say in that moment, honestly. And to hear him say that, and the look on his on his face, and then throw the touchdown, and then the look on his face after that, was just MVP stuff.”
Stafford was 12-of-15 for 143 yards and two touchdowns over the entire fourth quarter, but none of those heroics will count toward an MVP vote that was already closed before the game kicked off. While it remains to be seen if Stafford will win that prize, Saturday’s performance provided reason to think bigger trophies might still be coming the Rams’ way this season.
