It’s arguably the strength of the team, and a unit that made dramatic improvement this past season after being ranked near the bottom of the league by Pro Football Focus the previous year. In 2024, the Carolina Panthers were PFF’s eighth-ranked offensive front. The 2024 free-agent additions of guards Damien Lewis and Robert Hunt complimented left tackle Ikem Ekwonu and right tackle Taylor Moton, respectively. Each of these blockers played and started at least 14 games this past season.
Center was a much different story. Veteran Austin Corbett went down for the remainder of the season in Week 5. Cade Mays started eight of the club’s final nine outings, and Brady Christensen made three starts at the pivot as well. This offseason, there’s been a competition for the starting center job. On Monday, head coach Dave Canales’s announced the winner.
Veteran Austin Corbett is Dave Canales’s starting center
“We talked to Austin and we talked to Cade Mays; they both did a great job,” said Canales (via Darin Gantt of Panthers.com). “Austin Corbett’s going to be our starting center. We decided to make that decision knowing that this week, going to Houston with the joint practice and then having the game, we felt like those reps just kind of solidifying who’s the starter going to be with Bryce Young, it’s a good time to kind of transition to where he’s getting more of those reps versus split.”
Mays, whose eight starts in 2024 were a career-high, is obviously a nice insurance policy up the middle. The 2022 sixth-round pick from the University of Tennessee (who began his college career at Georgia) enters the final year of his rookie contract. Keep in mind that general manager Dan Morgan also re-signed Christensen this offseason. The Panthers’ offensive front now has a little proven depth, and may be an even bigger factor in 2025.
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