How Every Carolina Panthers Rookie Actually Performed in 2025

Naturally, Tetairoa McMillan is the standout for this class. He's basically the standout of the entire rookie class for the NFL. For the Panthers, he played the most snaps: 984. He led the class in WAR with 0.589, though he did not lead the NFL's rookies. Colston Loveland did.

McMillan was first in the team's rookie class in PFF grade at 79.3, and he led all rookie wide receivers in that metric as well. The one other noteworthy thing PFF analyst Mark Chichester pointed out was that Corey Thornton, in limited action, was third among rookie cornerbacks with a 68.6 PFF grade.

Despite McMillan being so good, Nic Scourton was not far behind him in WAR. The edge recorded 0.051 WAR, which makes McMillan's performance even more impressive, as an edge is more valuable than a wide receiver.

Only Princely Umanmielen (-0.021), Cam Jackson (-0.003), and Bam Martin-Scott (-0.007) were negatively impactful for the Panthers among all their rookies, so this was quite a good class.

Mitchell Evans was third in WAR with 0.133. Jimmy Horn, in just 167 snaps, produced 0.039 WAR and a 61.3 PFF grade. With those two, the Panthers could have some intriguing young weapons that are being overlooked.

WAR is a difficult stat to analyze, but it essentially means how many wins a player added to their team. So without McMillan, the Panthers lose half a game more, and likely do not make the playoffs. It's most known in baseball, but with there being almost 10 times the games in the MLB, the numbers make a lot more sense.

Essentially, if McMillan were in the MLB, that WAR would've translated to 4.8 WAR, which makes him equivalent to George Springer and Mookie Betts, two very good baseball players.