{"id":759993,"date":"2026-02-18T09:20:47","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T09:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/759993\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T09:20:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T09:20:47","slug":"beloved-panthers-player-to-return-next-season-on-1-year-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/759993\/","title":{"rendered":"Beloved Panthers player to return next season on 1-year contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – The longest-tenured player in Carolina Panthers franchise history will be back for another year.<\/p>\n

Long snapper JJ Jansen signed a contract for the 2026 season on Tuesday, the team announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 40-year-old Jansen has played in 277 games through his first 17 seasons, which is by far the most in Panthers history. To put 277 games into perspective, that is more games than Cam Newton and Greg Olsen played for Carolina combined.<\/p>\n

Including interim ones, Jansen has played under eight head coaches with the Panthers, and is the last remaining player from the team that played in Super Bowl 50.<\/p>\n

He has also worked his way into the hearts of Panthers fans, becoming a favorite among them thanks to his endearing personality and \u201cCart Talk<\/a>\u201d YouTube segments.<\/p>\n

Panthers special teams coordinator Tracy Smith was asked about Jansen\u2019s future in Carolina during a Dec. 31 press conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can do this for as long as he wants … he\u2019s everlasting,\u201d Smith said of Jansen. \u201cThere\u2019s no proof that he\u2019s not a robot. Nobody knows that he is not AI. We\u2019re just going to go for it for the end of time, as far as I\u2019m concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jansen was one of three permanent team captains in 2025, alongside Bryce Young and Derrick Brown.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s doing a great job, [I\u2019m] happy to have him,\u201d Smith said during the same press conference. \u201cHe has embodied the captain role and taken it seriously and he really kind of makes his part of his daily mission to help his teammates any way he can.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Smith\u2019s take on the one-year deals Jansen has signed in recent seasons, he called such contracts \u201ckind of the norm\u201d for veteran long snappers in the NFL.<\/p>\n

The 2013 Pro Bowler hasn\u2019t been kept around for so long for no reason. He has not had a bad snap since 2010, granted bad snaps are not an officially tracked statistic.<\/p>\n

\"JJJJ Jansen has played in more games than any other player in Panthers history.(Adam Hunger | AP)Click here for more Panthers coverage<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 WBTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – The longest-tenured player in Carolina Panthers franchise history will be back for another year.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[17051,2369,235,260,2567,5132,7543,4092,2377,7,19906,10408,108567,13223,6044,3782,35048,206,88,3551,6,236,73798,189,3156,3783,9,5870,706,1320],"class_list":{"0":"post-759993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-17051","9":"tag-back","10":"tag-carolina","11":"tag-carolina-panthers","12":"tag-carolinapanthers","13":"tag-center","14":"tag-coming","15":"tag-contract","16":"tag-deal","17":"tag-football","18":"tag-j-j","19":"tag-jansen","20":"tag-janson","21":"tag-jj","22":"tag-latest","23":"tag-long","24":"tag-ls","25":"tag-new","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-next","28":"tag-nfl","29":"tag-panthers","30":"tag-resigned","31":"tag-season","32":"tag-signed","33":"tag-snapper","34":"tag-sports","35":"tag-update","36":"tag-updates","37":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116090902551925554","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}