Jadeveon Clowney’s homecoming: Panthers get the edge rusher they needed (2025)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — An hour or so after the Panthers announced they were bringing Jadeveon Clowney back to the Carolinas, his high school coach recognized a reporter’s number late Wednesday afternoon and answered his phone saying, “Go Panthers.”

The media loves homecoming stories, and Clowney’s is a good one. He was South Carolina’s Mr. Football and the country’s consensus No. 1 player in 2010 at South Pointe High in Rock Hill, a half-hour south of Charlotte on I-77. During his nationally televised, signing-day news conference, Gamecocks players skipped class to watch Clowney choose South Carolina over Alabama and Clemson.

His college career was almost apocryphal, from his 4 1/2-sack game against Clemson in 2012 to his helmet-popping, ball-jarring hit on Michigan running back Vincent Smith in the 2013 Outback Bowl. But after being drafted first overall by Houston in 2014, Clowney played with five NFL teams but never the Panthers.

And that might have still been the case had the Panthers not presented an opportunity to play close to home — and offered him a two-year, $20 million deal with incentives that could push it to $24 million. The Jets and Ravens also were interested in Clowney, who was one of the league’s best bargains at $2.5 million last year in Baltimore.

But Clowney made it known he was looking for substantially more money in his next contract. The sense around the league was the Ravens weren’t willing to spend big on Clowney, who matched his career high with 9 1/2 sacks in his lone season in Baltimore. Given what the Panthers’ edge rusher depth chart looked like after the Brian Burns trade, the Panthers didn’t have much choice.

As Bobby Carroll, Clowney’s coach at South Pointe said: “I don’t know what kind of money (Baltimore) had to work with, but I’m sure it came down to how much paper was being tossed around.”

The Panthers were OK with tossing around some paper in the hopes that Clowney would toss around his share of quarterbacks the next two seasons. For all the promise the Panthers showed last year defensively, they were pretty poor at rushing the passer. And that was with Burns on the roster.

It didn’t help that the Panthers never led in the fourth quarter of any game, which meant quarterbacks could hand the ball off and salt away wins rather than pass every play while trying to catch up. The Panthers’ 27 sacks were the fewest in the NFL and tied for the third-fewest in team history.

Then they traded their top edge rusher to the Giants and saw their second-best edge guy (Yetur Gross-Matos) sign with the 49ers. So while adding a 31-year-old veteran might seem an odd fit for a young, rebuilding team, the Panthers weren’t going to usher in the Dave Canales era by trotting out D.J. Wonnum and DJ Johnson as the starting outside linebackers in Week 1.

Now they’ll have a bona fide pass rusher to chase after Kirk Cousins, Baker Mayfield and Derek Carr in the division, not to mention Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, Joe Burrow, Dak Prescott, Jalen Hurts and Caleb Williams — assuming the Bears take him No. 1 — all on the schedule.

Clowney has battled injuries throughout his career and has never finished a season with double-digit sacks. But he’s still made plays that few other men on the planet could make.

Consider: Since 2000, there have been only three games in which a player finished with at least four tackles for loss and two sacks while scoring a touchdown on a fumble return. And Clowney has two of them.

“My understanding talking to coaches and people in the league, Clowney was really a big run-stopper. He wasn’t this freakish sack guy, even though he’s had adequate number of sacks and (showed) his (pass rush) potential last year,” Carroll said. “He was really disruptive with the run game. He did some incredible stuff stopping the run.”

Clowney will have to do more than stop the run to hit incentives that are tied to sacks, according to ESPN. And there’s always a concern that edge rushers in their 30s will hit the wall and their production will drop precipitously. The Panthers paid Justin Houston $6 million for half a sack last year in his age-34 season.

And while the hometown angle might be fun for fans and reporters, it’s not always great for the returning players, depending on how demanding or distracting their family and friend groups are.

Shaq Thompson, always a team player, just so happened to free up the No. 7 that Jadeveon Clowney wore at South Carolina 10 days ago. https://t.co/AZk8XfShcq

— Joe Person (@josephperson) March 27, 2024

And since we’re on the topic: How weird/cool/improbable would it be if the Panthers added free agent cornerback Stephon Gilmore to the South Pointe reunion tour? The Athletic reported the Panthers have reached out to Gilmore, who won a state championship with Clowney in high school, about a possible return.

Carroll, the coach of that title-winning team in 2008, owns a profitable hay farm but hasn’t given up his whistle. Now at Kings Mountain in North Carolina, next season will be Carroll’s 42nd year in coaching. He’s seen a lot of players come and go and sent several to the NFL. But there haven’t been any quite like the guy the Panthers just landed.

“(Even) climbing up on probably 31 years old, maybe already there, I’d still put my money on him,” Carroll said. “If I needed a guy, Clowney’d be the one I’d look for.”

(Top photo of Jadeveon Clowney: Karl Merton Ferron / Baltimore Sun / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Joe Person is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Carolina Panthers. He has covered the team since 2010, previously for the Charlotte Observer. A native of Williamsport, Pa., Joe is a graduate of William & Mary, known for producing presidents and NFL head coaches. Follow Joe on Twitter @josephperson