In 2020, their first season under new head coach Matt Rhule and defensive coordinator Phil Snow, the Carolina Panthers ranked 24th in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted defensive metrics, and 23rd against the pass. Only the Seahawks and the Buccaneers played more snaps of zone coverage in their pass defense than did the Panthers, and in zone coverage, the Panthers gave up 265 completions on 393 attempts for 2886 yards, 12 touchdowns, and six interceptions.
When in man coverage, however, the Panthers under Snow were a relative clown show, allowing 59 catches on 98 targets for 653 yards, 15 touchdowns, and one interception. These stats (per Sports Info Solutions) are skewed to a point because teams often play man coverage in the red zone, but even against passes of 10 or more air yards, Carolina still allowed three touchdowns and had no picks when playing man coverage.
This isn’t sustainable in today’s NFL, where the RPO and the quick passing game often take outside pass rush out of the picture, and the ability to disrupt receivers off their routes is ever more crucial. One assumes the Panthers’ staff was aware of this, and it’s a primary reason they selected South Carolina cornerback Jaycee Horn with the eighth overall pick. Of the four cornerbacks I’d consider to be slam-dunk first-round talents — Horn, Alabama’s Patrick Surtain, Virginia Tech’s Caleb Farley, and Northwestern’s Greg Newsome II — Horn went first off the board.
First-year general manager Scott Fitterer, who helped the Seahawks create and expand their paradigm of big, aggressive cornerbacks via multiple roles throughout the Pete Carroll era, was right in line with this particular selection.
“We have Donte (Jackson) on the other side, brought in AJ Bouye, we like our young guys; but just to add someone with the competitive makeup that Jaycee has, that edge that he brings to the team and just his overall skillset to cover,” Fitterer said. “Cover a guy one‐on‐one, take away a side of the field, that is what excited us. Then you get to meet the person, you hear him talk, the way he carries himself, he is a pro, I think the transition will be quick with him. So we are excited to get him.”
Rhule, having seen where his defense fell apart last season, was all about the schematic concerns.
“We played a lot of man too last year,” Rhule said after the Horn pick. “We play zone, we play man, we’re always going to be really versatile with what Phil [Snow] does, even within what people might call “zones” like on PFF, we’ll single up a guy, we’ll lock a guy up. The more guys we have that can play man coverage, especially on third down. To me this year for us this off season has been all about how do we address third down, the red zone and two minute end of game. The ability, versus the quarterbacks we’re facing, to play zone on third down is really hard. We weren’t able to play much man on third down last year, we did play some, but this allows us to play more man on third down. But even within our zone coverages there’s a lot of man components that when you have a guy who can do it, really unlocks the coverages and allows you to do more.”
Last season, the Panthers played some sort of man coverage on 51 of their opponents’ third-down snaps, allowing 30 receptions on 51 attempts for 423 yards, three touchdowns, and one interception. In zone coverage on third down, Carolina gave up 44 receptions on 63 attempts for 575 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions. So, let’s just say that third-down pass defense was a problem all around.
Cover-1 — man coverage underneath with one deep safety — is a primary coverage in today’s NFL, and nobody ran it better in the NCAA in 2020 than Horn. Opposing quarterbacks targeted Horn nine times in Cover-1 last season, and they quickly came to regret it, as he allowed just one catch for 14 yards. Horn also picked off one pass in Cover-1, dropped another interception, had three pass deflections, and allowed an opponent passer rating of 0.00. That’s about as good as it gets, and it represented a huge improvement from 2019, when he allowed eight receptions on 19 targets in Cover-1 for two touchdowns with no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 102.08.
Horn has the perfect athletic temperament to be a press defender at any level of football. An obnoxiously aggressive player (and I mean that as a positive), Horn will tie opposing receivers up from the first step as long as he’s able to get on them from start to finish. Like most bigger, more aggressive cornerbacks, he can be beaten by quicker receivers in shorter spaces with angular routes. But if your primary team need is for a mercenary eraser with a wolverine’s mentality, this is the guy you want in this class ahead of anyone else.
Just ask former Clemson receiver Tee Higgins (selected by the Bengals in with the 33rd overall pick in the 2020 draft) about his reps against Horn in 2019. Higgins caught three passes for 101 yards and two touchdowns against South Carolina’s other overmatched defenders, but Horn just erased him on a deep seam route from Trevor Lawrence…
…and did the same on a quick slant in the end zone. That’s just how he rolls.
Rhule also brought up Horn’s 2020 game against Auburn, where he was in lockdown mode for the most part, both outside and from the slot.
“He’s playing against really good wideouts, guys that you’re going to see get drafted,” Rhule concluded regarding that game, in which Horn allowed just two catches on 10 targets for 55 yards, four yards after the catch, one touchdown, two interceptions, five pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 43.8. “You feel him, you feel him play. I like the way our defense is coming in Carolina. I think when you have guys like Derrick Brown and Brian Burns and Shaq Thompson and Jeremy Chinn and a whole bunch more, I don’t want to leave anyone out; there’s going to be a certain way that we play. You’re going to have to match that intensity and I think Jaycee’s naturally got that. Pair him with Donte, AJ and the other guys that we have, and I think our corner room becomes a real strength.”
That’s why the Panthers had Horn as the top guy on their board with the eighth pick — because they need a young safety who can set the tone in every possible way, especially in man coverage.