The Carolina Panthers hired Dan Morgan as president of football operations and general manager on January 22, 2024. Morgan is a Panthers “lifer” after spending his seven-year NFL career in Charlotte from 2001 through 2007 then spending years in the Panthers front office.
Let’s take a look back on Morgan’s second season as GM and assess his performance with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. The way I grade is a “C” signifies “meets expectations”, so anything above or below a “C” means exceeding or failing
to meet expectations. This week we’ll assess Morgan’s performance with the trades – er, trade – he engineered this year.
The case for the Adam Thielen trade
Dan Morgan and the Panthers front office only initiated one trade this year which was sending veteran wide receiver Adam Thielen back to his former, long-term team, the Minnesota Vikings. Here’s the summary:
Panthers gave up: 2026 7th round, 2027 5th round
Panthers received: 2026 5th round, 2027 4th round
Morgan made this trade in August before the season began. The Panthers rationale in making the deal was the team had a number of young wide receivers they wanted to develop, including rookies Tetairoa McMillan and Jimmy Horn Jr., plus second year players Xavier Legette, Jalen Coker, and Brycen Tremayne. David Moore was coming off a 2024 season with 32 receptions for 351 yards and three touchdowns to provide some veteran stability.
Plus, at 35, Thielen was a dinosaur in NFL years. He also missed seven games in 2024 with a hamstring injury and his health was a concern. Going back home to Minnesota where he had played for 10 seasons seemed like a nice send-off for a veteran receiver as the Panthers were expected to continue their perpetual rebuild.
What the Panthers received
First off, the Panthers received very little in return for a highly-productive wide receiver.
Where Morgan whiffed is by not generating any additional, new draft picks in the deal.
Moving up from the seventh round to the fifth round this year has very little value. By Day 3 of the draft most teams are just scratching lottery tickets hoping to hit a $20 payout, which is nice but doesn’t change your standard of living. Moving up from the fifth round to the fourth round in two years is okay, I guess, but teams that nail fourth round picks can usually do the same in the fifth.
In other words, the Panthers still have the same amount of lottery tickets to scratch, cross their fingers, and hope for at least a small payout. They’ll just be scratching them a bit sooner.
If Morgan could have generated an additional pick rather than simply moving up a few rounds, then that would have been different.
When the Panthers announced the trade the team said moving up in those rounds is “effectively the value of a fourth-round pick.”
But it’s not an additional fourth-round pick. Getting an additional fourth-round pick for the veteran wideout would have created some real value. Moving up a couple of rounds later in the draft is just “meh.”
The Panthers gave up real value in Adam Thielen
In retrospect, the Panthers offense as a whole and Bryce Young individually missed Adam Thielen this year. They could have used him as they made their surprising rise to the top of weak NFC South and lost in heartbreaking fashion in the Wild Card round.
While it’s easy to dismiss Thielen as just “old”, he had something no other Panthers wide receiver possessed: Undeniable chemistry with Bryce Young.
In his previous two seasons in Carolina Thielen amassed 151 receptions for 1,629 yards while catching 76% of his targets. He often served as the security blanket for the Panthers young, inconsistent quarterback. In all he averaged an impressive 5.3 receptions for 60.3 yards per game in two seasons in Charlotte.
While Tetairoa McMillan emerged a the clear WR1 this year, the Panthers never found their consistent WR2. That’s the role Thielen could have played in Carolina’s run to the postseason. Jalen Coker was the second-leading wide receiver on the team with just 394 receiving yards.
Adam Thielen knew his role and performed it well in Carolina. He was the chain mover. He found open spaces on 3rd-and-6 to give Bryce Young a viable target. He caught 77.4% of his targets in 2024. When Young began panicking in the pocket, which happens often, Thielen was there to calm him.
This year Thielen remained healthy and appeared in 16 games for the Vikings and the Pittsburgh Steelers. However, his production fell off a cliff to 19 receptions for 186 yards as he struggled to fit both of those offenses.
But he clearly fit in Carolina! He should have been the unmistakable WR2, making the game easier for Bryce Young and opening up routes for Tetairoa McMillan. Even if his per-game production in 2025 fell 15% from 2024’s levels, here’s what he would have produced assuming he played 13 games, missing four games due to potentially being banged up at times given his age:
13 games: 53 receptions (4.1/G), 680 yards (52.3/G), 65.8% catch percentage
It’s all hypothetical, but does Bryce Young develop faster with Adam Thielen in Carolina this past season?
Do the Panthers win more games and stake their claim as the leader of the NFC South?
Does Carolina end up beating the Rams in the Wild Card round?
While we don’t know the answer to those questions, Thielen’s presence was clearly missed in Carolina this past year. Moving up a couple of rounds late in the draft is a small return for a proven, productive player on what became a playoff team. Morgan failed to get additional draft picks in the deal, which would have improved his trade grade in this transaction that seems like a whiff in retrospect.
Grade: D+
