Model projects Panthers will go from 1st to worst in NFC South

The Carolina Panthers broke their long playoff drought last season, winning the NFC South with an 8-9 record. While it's a huge improvement over how they've done in the previous few years, context is king in the NFL—and it's important to keep in mind the level of competition we're dealing with here.

Case in point—the NFC South is, by far, the worst division in the league right now. And whoever winds up winning the division is likely to get blasted out of the wild-card round by whoever they face, even with home-field advantage.

The Panthers came close to upsetting the Los Angeles Rams in that precise scenario last year, but that doesn't change the math—which is down on Carolina going into 2026.

According to a projection model from Austin Mock at The Athletic, the Panthers will go from first to worst in their division, finishing in fourth place with 6.7 wins. Only the Arizona Cardinals (4.4) have a lower projection in the NFC.

Mock writes:

And then there’s the first-to-worst Carolina Panthers. That’s right, a year after they “conquered” the division at 8-9, my model forecasts a division-worst 6.7 wins for the Panthers in 2026. That’s partially because of a difficult schedule, but mostly because the model isn’t a fan of quarterback Bryce Young, especially if his offensive line isn’t healthy.

Right now, Young's offensive line is pretty far from 100-percent healthy, and we just saw how much he can struggle when that's the case. As of now, starting tackles Ikem Ekwonu and Taylor Moton are likely to miss time into the regular season while starting guards Damien Lewis and Robert Hunt are dealing with nagging camp injuries.

The Panthers have invested more money than any other team by a wide margin into that unit, but throwing money at a problem won't necessarily solve it. And keep in mind, the Panthers have little choice but to overpay to attract free agents.

If the offensive line struggles anything like the way it did last weekend against the Buffalo Bills, it's difficult to argue that they'll perform any better than this model suggests.

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This article originally appeared on Panthers Wire: Model projects Panthers will go from 1st to worst in NFC South