Keep Pounding, Panthers nation. One of ours just got his flowers from the only voters whose opinion really counts: the rest of the league.
The NFL revealed Sunday that Derrick Brown checks in at No. 90 on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2026, the annual ranking voted on entirely by players. It’s the first time Brown has made the list, and only about six percent of the league does. Bryce Young joined him at No. 98, giving Carolina two names on the countdown and its first representation since 2023. Here’s the kicker, though. The defense that Brown dragged back to respectability just got a serious talent infusion this offseason, and the timing could not be better.
Rewind 18 months. A knee injury cost Brown 16 games of the 2024 season and left the middle of Carolina’s defense wide open. He came back in 2025 and didn’t ease his way in. He played all 17 games, logged 808 defensive snaps, and turned in career-best numbers of 5.0 sacks and seven passes defensed to go with 73 tackles and a game-winning forced fumble against the Rams in November.
Those 73 tackles ranked second among all interior defensive linemen in football, and he racked them up while offenses double-teamed him on 64.4 percent of his snaps. Teams built entire game plans around keeping him away from the quarterback, and he still finished near the top of his position in his first full year off the knee.
Record-setting is old hat for Brown anyway. His 103 tackles in 2023 stand as the NFL single-season record for a defensive lineman, breaking Christian Wilkins’ mark of 98. That season earned him his first Pro Bowl and a four-year, $96 million extension with $63.165 million guaranteed, a deal that, at $24 million per year, put the former No. 7 overall pick out of Auburn among the highest-paid defensive tackles in the sport.
Here’s the part that mattered most last season. Brown didn’t just stuff a stat sheet. He dragged an entire defense out of the basement. Look at the leap from 2024 to 2025:
- Total defense: 32nd (404.5 yards/game) to 16th (372.2)
- Run defense: 32nd (179.8 yards/game) to 20th (123.3)
- Scoring defense: 32nd (31.4 points/game) to 15th (22.4)
Dead last to respectable across the board, in a single season, anchored by the guy in the middle. His teammates don’t call it a coincidence. They call it Brown.
“You just look at our defense last year, being one of the worst in the league, and him coming back, now it’s changed,” corner Jaycee Horn said during the season. “We’re playing so much better. It’s not a coincidence; he’s back, and he’s helping… He’s been balling.” Horn didn’t hedge on where Brown stacks up: one of the best at his position in the league, if not the best.
Right guard Robert Hunt blocks him every week in practice, and his scouting report ran short. “Oh, because he’s just a bad mother.” Then he filled in the rest. “He’s just big, strong, physical, plays the game the right way… He eats up doubles. He’s hard to block one-on-one. He’s just a hell of a player.”
Bryce Young pointed at the work that never shows up in a box score. “It’s someone we can all lean on as a team… even on the first down, the mundane stuff, he does so much that doesn’t even show up on the stat sheet, and so much that does. We all rely on him.”
That captain wore the “C” in 2025 and pushed Carolina back into January for the first time since 2017. The Panthers went 8-9, won the NFC South for the first time since 2015 on head-to-head tiebreakers, and took the Rams to the wire before falling 34-31 in the Wild Card round. General manager Dan Morgan looked at a defense one piece away from dangerous and spent the spring loading up around its anchor.
Start with the pass rush. Carolina handed edge rusher Jaelan Phillips a four-year, $120 million deal with $80 million guaranteed, betting on a 26-year-old who flashed real juice across stops in Miami and Philadelphia in 2025. Pair a true edge threat with the double teams Brown already commands inside, and the math gets ugly for opposing quarterbacks in a hurry.
The middle got an upgrade too. Linebacker Devin Lloyd arrived on a three-year, $45 million contract with $25 million guaranteed at signing, fresh off an 81-tackle, five-interception season with Jacksonville. That’s a sideline-to-sideline thumper who can take the ball away, lining up right behind the wall Brown builds up front. Then in the draft, Morgan traded up two spots with Minnesota to grab Texas Tech defensive tackle Lee Hunter in the second round, giving Brown a young, powerful running mate on the interior. Carolina also added length to the secondary with rookie corner Will Lee III.
The first-round pick went to the other side of the ball, tackle Monroe Freeling at No. 19 overall, addressing a line that ranked near the bottom of the league in pass and run blocking last year. Protect Young, win up front on both sides, and let Brown lead a deeper defense. That’s the blueprint.
True to form, the personal honor barely moved the needle for him. “That’s cool, but I mean, I’ll chase a little more than that these days,” Brown said. “To be within the top 100 guys in the best football league in the world, you can’t hate something like that. But… I just feel so many more team aspirations and so many more personal aspirations.” Translation: 90th isn’t the goal. Winning is.
Stack it all up heading into the fall. A 16-spot jump in total defense. A division title. A playoff berth. A franchise cornerstone in his prime, signed through the rest of the decade, now flanked by a $120 million edge rusher, a ball-hawking linebacker, and a fresh interior partner. Add a young secondary led by Horn and a quarterback in Young who just earned his own Top 100 nod, and the picture comes into focus.
Brown carried that defense up the standings while still shaking off the rust. Now he’s got real help. The league just confirmed what we watched every Sunday: Derrick Brown is one of the best in football, and the Panthers finally built a roster worthy of him.
No. 90 and climbing. #KeepPounding
Check out my free SubStack here
