The good people at Pro Football Focus spend enormous amounts of time breaking down every player’s performance on every individual play throughout the season. In the end, players can then be given a final rating somewhere between zero (poor) and 100 (elite).
If you want to learn more about PFF’s methodology, you can read their Player Grade overview.
Most of us as fans view PFF ratings this way: “If the grade fits my opinion of a player then it’s credible, but if the grade conflicts with my conclusions
then PFF is stupid garbage and should never be trusted.” I’m not advocating for PFF, rather I’m just providing one set of data that’s at least interesting.
Here’s how PFF graded and ranked the Panthers primary defensive players who played at least 300 snaps in 2025.
For the most part, PFF didn’t think much of the individual performance of Carolina’s defensive players. Here are the highlights by position group:
Interior defensive line
Poor Derrick Brown. The guy is an absolute game wrecker in the middle of the line. Not only was he shamefully omitted from the Pro Bowl in 2025, PFF somehow graded him out as just the 18th best player at his position, meaning half of the teams in the NFL have a better interior defensive lineman than Derrick Brown. That’s just crazy. If he played for a team that was on national television every other week (Kansas City Chiefs, Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills, etc.) he would be gushed over by the national media and in the conversation for All-Pro every year.
On the other end of the spectrum, PFF was pretty hard on Tershawn Wharton ranking him No. 118 of 131 players at his position. He was a big-money free agent signing before this season when the Panthers signed him to a 3-year, $45 million contract. He only appeared in nine games in his debut season in Carolina and hopefully he rebounds next year.
Edge rushers
The Panthers seemed to have found something in second-round rookie Nic Scourton. He had 47 tackles, seven tackles for loss, nine quarterback hits, and five sacks in his rookie campaign. He was a defensive mainstay playing 717 snaps and PFF ranked him No. 52 of 120 edge rushers, which is an outstanding result for a second-round rookie.
Linebackers
Not good. Moving on…
Cornerbacks
In the biggest shocker of all, Mike Jackson not had the single best PFF grade on the defense at 83.5, he graded out as the No. 3 corner in the entire NFL! I thought Jackson had a solid season, but an All-Pro season? Color me skeptical.
Any evaluation service that ranks Jaycee Horn as the No. 67 corner in the league should be laughed out of the room. The dude made the Pro Bowl this year, just as he did last year. Another whiff at cornerback for PFF.
Safeties
Both Tre’von Moehrig and Nick Scott graded out around league average for safeties despite both of them racking up more than 100 tackles. While neither of them were impact players who changed games for the Panthers, they were adequate on the back end and solid in run support. Moehrig even posted three sacks and seven quarterback hits on the season, so I think PFF underrated him a bit after a fairly solid season.
