As the reigning Walter Payton Man of the Year, Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis was in Chicago to announce his team’s pick.
And he got to pick the guy who might eventually replace him.
The Panthers took Washington safety-linebacker Shaq Thompson with the 25th overall pick.
How they’ll use Thompson remains to be seen, but there was equivalent confusion when they took Davis 14th overall in 2005, when the Georgia safety came to Charlotte without a defined role.
Davis settled in at linebacker, and the same might be true of Thompson, who also played running back for the Huskies. For the short term, he’s likely a situational player, who can fill in several roles. But because of his similar profile, it’s natural to think he’ll slide in next to middle linebacker Luke Kuechly at some point.
The Panthers, who were the only team to put Thompson through a private workout and bring him in for a visit, have said they wanted to extend the 32-year-old Davis’s contract, but it will be interesting to see if that happens now that they have such a player with a similar profile, regardless how well Davis has recovered from three torn ACLs.
