Tommy Tremble has spent five NFL seasons doing unglamorous work: clearing lanes, sealing edges, staying in on third-and-short when the defense brings extra rushers. The Panthers loved him for it. In March 2025, they paid $16 million over two years to keep him doing it. He turns 26 today.
The Panthers’ offense looks different in 2026. And Tremble’s role has to grow with it.
Dave Canales handed play-calling to Brad Idzik this offseason. Idzik, 34, calls his first NFL game this September, with Darrell Bevell on staff as a resource. Canales built Carolina’s system around tight end usage: short crossers, seam routes, red zone targets. Tremble learned it well enough to set career highs last season: 27 catches, 249 yards, two touchdowns on 37 targets. Those numbers will not scare any defensive coordinator. They represent growth, and they happened during the Panthers’ first NFC South title run since 2015.
The question for 2026 is whether Idzik expands that role or holds it steady.
Ja’Tavion Sanders gives the coaching staff a second option. Carolina’s 2024 fourth-round pick out of Texas caught 29 passes for 190 yards and a score in 13 games last season before breaking his fibula in December. He was running and cutting again by spring, with Dan Morgan saying he could be ready for OTAs. Sanders runs cleaner routes and has softer hands in traffic than Tremble. The Panthers drafted him knowing that.
That distinction matters for Tremble’s contract-year math. His deal runs through 2026. The Panthers committed $191 million in free agency this offseason, the fifth-most in the league, upgrading other positions while trusting the TE room to develop from within. A 30-catch, 280-yard season earns Tremble his next contract somewhere else at a discount. Fifty catches change the conversation.
The blocking will be there. Tremble graded well in run support across all five of his NFL seasons, the 6’3″, 253 pounds, a player who holds a point of attack. But blocking tight ends age out of starting roles unless they develop a passing-game dimension that keeps defenses honest. Tremble showed in 2025 that he can get open and catch enough to function as a receiving option. He has not shown he can do it at volume.
Idzik’s scheme will clarify things early. Two-TE sets put Tremble and Sanders on the field together, a blocker and a mover, and make both useful. Spread concepts that ask a single tight end to flex into space favor Sanders, which could shrink Tremble’s passing opportunities even as his run-blocking role holds firm. For a first-time play-caller inheriting a system he helped build, the temptation may be to keep Tremble in the role Canales defined for him and add touches at the margin. That path gets Tremble to 30 catches and a hometown discount offer next spring.
The Panthers play more primetime games in 2026 than they have since 2016. Cameras will find Bryce Young. They will find the offense Idzik builds. Tremble will work somewhere in the background, the same way he has worked for five years, and the shape of his season will tell him what comes next. He turns 26 today. For a tight end who came into the league as a blocker, 26 is when you either become something more or you sign your career’s ceiling.
Follow me on Substack for FREE
