Could the Carolina Panthers scoop up the star of Super Bowl LX?
Fresh off the Seattle Seahawks‘ dominant championship win over the New England Patriots, Bleacher Report’s Maurice Moton has named the top five landing spots for the game’s Most Valuable Player—running back Kenneth Walker III. Moton lists five teams, and leads off with the Panthers.
Advertisement
He writes:
The Carolina Panthers’ motto is “Keep Pounding,” but they didn’t do enough of that in the second half of the 2025 season.
The Panthers ran for 110 or more yards in eight of their first nine games, going 5-4 in that stretch. In its last nine contests, which include a playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams, Carolina eclipsed 100 rushing yards just three times and went 3-6. It lost five of its last seven matchups.
Rico Dowdle led the Panthers in rushing with 1,076 yards while averaging 4.6 yards per carry. They could lose him in free agency, which would be a significant blow to their ground attack.
Chuba Hubbard regressed after signing a four-year, $33.2 million extension during the 2024 season. He finished the 2025 campaign with 511 rushing yards and a touchdown on a 3.8-yards-per-carry average. The 26-year-old isn’t an explosive playmaker in the short passing game, either. Carolina shouldn’t trust him to handle the majority of the rushing workload.
Walker can provide what Dowdle brought to the Panthers’ ground game with strong ball security. He’s only fumbled three times in his career and didn’t lose any of them.
Walker is coming off the second-most productive season of his four-year NFL career, having run for 1,027 yards and five touchdowns on 221 carries. The 25-year-old then proceeded to rip through the playoffs, totaling 313 yards and four scores on 65 rushing attempts as well as 11 receptions for 104 yards.
Panthers head coach Dave Canales crossed paths with Walker during his last season in Seattle. Canales served as the Seahawks’ quarterbacks coach in 2022, the same year Walker was selected by the organization as a second-round pick.
Follow @ThePanthersWire on Twitter/X for more Panthers content.
This article originally appeared on Panthers Wire: Panthers named top landing spot for Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III