Jaelan Phillips signing is high-risk NFL free agency splash the Panthers had to make

The Carolina Panthers have been slowly building through the draft for years, but on Monday they decided it was time to make a serious move. Stunning the NFL world, the team signed EDGE Jaelan Phillips to a four-year, $120M contract in order to give them one of the league’s best pass rushers, to fix their biggest weakness in one fell swoop — but that doesn’t mean the move comes without risk. Carolina’s Phillips signing earned a ‘B’ grade from us, and it makes a lot of sense for this type of boom-or-bust move.

When it comes to Jaelan Phillips the biggest mistake people make is looking at the sack total and justifying his worth by it. It’s certainly fair to question why an EDGE rusher with only 5.0 sacks last year is worth the money the Panthers gave him, but scratch the surface and you see a player who does incredible things which don’t overtly show themselves on the stat sheet — and why the Panthers felt comfortable with this massive deal.

To begin we need to look at the disruption Phillips brings to the table. Despite only playing 412 pass rush snaps in 2025, Phillips finished Top 10 in the NFL with 73 pressures. He was also 5th in the league in hurries, with 57 on the year. To put that in context his 17.7% pressure rating is on-par with what Micah Parsons did for the Packers in 2025 (18.1%), and much higher than numerous pass rushers who finished higher than Phillips in sack total, like Brian Burns, T.J. Watt, or Maxx Crosby.

It essentially comes down to one basic question: Would you rather Phillips complete five more plays and hit double-digit sacks, or generate 20+ more pressures over the course of the season?

The Panthers answered that question, because they know what they have on defense. The biggest issue Carolina had in 2025 was sealing the edge. Defensive tackle Derrick Brown is one of the best interior pass rushers in the league, but much of that disruption is for naught if a quarterback can simple escape laterally without needing to fear a defender coming off the edge. That’s what Phillips is going to bring to Carolina, in both ways. With the emergence of 2nd round rookie Nic Scourton, the Panthers now have two legitimate pass rushers for the first time in years.

This will work twofold for Carolina: Either Phillips will pressure off the edge, forcing the QB to step up in the pocket where Derrick Brown is collapsing the middle, or Brown will crash the interior, flushing the QB to Phillips. It’s the one-two punch this team has been looking for, but only really works if you have a high-pressure pass rusher off the edge. As productive as Brian Burns was for Carolina, one of the big reasons they traded him is that he’s never been a consistent, every-down pass rusher. This often resulted in gaudy end of year stats, but often feeling like he didn’t have a huge effect on the game. We saw this in New York last year as well, where Burns finished with a staggering 16.5 sacks, but ranked 20th in the NFL with 53 pressures. This is typically indicative of someone getting a lot of coverage sacks, rather than creating the disruption themselves.

Up to this point it might sound like this is a home run, perfectly glowing review — but there’s risk here too. The 2025 season was the first in three years that Phillips managed to play a full season. In 2023 he missed the season due to a torn achilles, then in 2024 a partially-torn ACL put him on IR once more. Those are two very significant injuries for a young player in his prime, and this is a player the Panthers are giving $80M in guaranteed money to.

Herein lies the boom-bust element of this deal. If Phillips can stay healthy, then everything about this deal screams that it could be a game-changer for the Carolina defense. If he doesn’t, well, it’s going to be very, very bad for them for the length of this deal. Is it an overpay? Perhaps by traditional measures, but by what we’ve seen in the market during this tampering period everyone is getting massive deals. Depth wide receivers are making $12M+ now, record-setting contracts for centers and punters. An expanding salary cap is just leading to a new normal.

Time will tell if this deal can pan out, but this will be a defining move for the Panthers in the near future — for better or worse.