What Makes Lee Hunter the Perfect Complement to Derrick Brown for Panthers

The Carolina Panthers have gone to great lengths to fix the interior of their defense since that dreadful 2024 season. That year, they allowed the most points in NFL history thanks in no small part to a run defense that allowed over 3,000 rushing yards.

Getting Derrick Brown back healthy in 2025 was key, but he's one man. He is a one-man wrecking crew, but he's still just one man. The Panthers signed Tershawn Wharton and Bobby Brown in an attempt to find someone who could pair with Brown to truly wreck an offensive line.

Neither really panned out, with Wharton earning an astonishing 43.0 PFF grade last season. A'Shawn Robinson, who was solid, was released in a cap-saving move. The Panthers, though, may have finally found the Robin to Brown's Batman in Lee Hunter, their second-round pick.

Lee Hunter is the ideal partner for Derrick Brown

Carolina Panthers defensive end Derrick Brown (95) during pregame | Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

What Derrick Brown does best is stop the run, but he's also a pretty great pass rusher from the inside. In 2025, he earned a very respectable 72.0 PFF pass rush grade. His run defense grade was curiously worse (chalk it up to the sometimes questionable nature of the grading system), but in 2023, the previous healthy year, Brown's rush grade was 90.0. If nothing else, 2025 might've been an outlier.

So to summarize, Brown is a dominant run defender who is more than capable of getting after the quarterback. Lee Hunter, who should line up right next to him, is exactly the same. He's a dominant run defender who is able to get in the backfield plenty.

PFF's staff broke down Carolina's full draft class, and the information about Hunter is particularly inspiring. It reveals a player who continued to get better at rushing the passer while remaining a force in the run game.

Hunter showed steady improvement across four seasons, culminating in a career-best 80.9 PFF grade in 2025. He earned an 84.5 run-defense grade, 12th among FBS interior defenders, finishing in the 96th percentile in run-stop rate," they wrote.

As for his ability to get to the quarterback, they added, "His pass-rush profile was solid but unspectacular, generating 26 pressures and a 72.1 grade, with above-average marks in both overall and true pass-rush situations."

Perhaps the Panthers would've done better to add a defensive tackle that was better at rushing the quarterback than stopping the run to sort of fill the gap left in Brown's rushing ability. The options, though, weren't that. Peter Woods is an elite run-stopper with mediocre pass-rush numbers.

Texas Tech defensive lineman Lee Hunter (DL15) during the NFL Scouting Combine | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Plus, this will help the Panthers more. Hunter will make it incredibly difficult to run the ball into the teeth of the Panthers' defense. That should force opponents into passing situations, and with Jaelan Phillips and Nic Scourton on the outside, that's not necessarily an advantage for the offense.

And with both Brown and Hunter able to provide pressure up the middle, there's really no avenue to attack this defensive line. All of a sudden, the Panthers are highly formidable up front, and Hunter's skillset is one of the biggest reasons for that.

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