Watch: Xavier Legette on video
The Panthers have quietly built one of the NFC’s more promising young receiver rooms, and Xavier Legette is running out of time to be part of it. Pro Football Rumors’ Connor Byrne laid out the case this week in a piece framing 2026 as a make-or-break year for the 2024 first-round pick, and the numbers underneath it are hard to argue with.
Carolina traded with Buffalo to take Legette at No. 32 overall, and coach Dave Canales gave him every opportunity as a rookie — more snaps than any other Panthers wideout. The production never followed. Legette caught 49 passes for 497 yards and four touchdowns in year one, then regressed to 35 catches for 363 yards last season despite another full-time role. Panthers quarterbacks posted a 67.4 passer rating when targeting him in 2025, among the lowest figures in the league for a qualified pass catcher, per Pro Football Reference, and Pro Football Focus graded him fifth-worst among 128 qualifying receivers.
Why it matters
What has changed around him is the real story. Tetairoa McMillan won Offensive Rookie of the Year with a 70-catch, 1,014-yard debut. Jalen Coker, an undrafted member of Legette’s own 2024 class, earned a three-year, $35 million extension in June. And general manager Dan Morgan spent a third-round pick in April on Chris Brazzell, an outside receiver who has already drawn praise from Canales. The depth chart no longer needs Legette to develop; it simply has room for him if he does.
To his credit, Legette is not hiding from any of it. He spent the offseason working to strengthen the hamstrings that have nagged him since college, telling The Athletic’s Joseph Person he aimed to “bulletproof” them. “I can’t have another year like I did last year,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
That is the right diagnosis. The fifth-year option decision on his rookie contract comes due next offseason, and if his third season looks like his first two, it will be an easy call for Morgan to decline it. Progress here is simple to define: hold off Brazzell for the starting job opposite McMillan, and give Bryce Young a reason to keep throwing his way.
