Hunter’s size immediately stood out<\/p>\n
Lee Hunter<\/a> is a mountain in the middle of the defensive line. He clocks in at 6-3, 318 pounds, and shadows over offensive linemen. The first time Caden McCloughan, the Panthers Southwest scout, met Hunter in person, he started dreaming of what could be in Carolina.<\/p>\n “I’ll tell you what, when you see Lee, the first thing that stands out is just how big he is,” McCloughan said Saturday.<\/p>\n “I mean, he’s a massive human being and, yeah, I mean, you get up on him, and it’s hard not to think about what that would look like next to Derrick Brown<\/a> and Bobby Brown III<\/a>.”<\/p>\n When scouts visit schools, they often already have a good idea of what a player shows on tape. Meeting face-to-face provides an opportunity to get to know the person. As McCloughan spent more time with Hunter, the person became just as important to the Panthers as the player.<\/p>\n “The more you get to watch him and then be around him, talk to people in the school\u2014I had a lot of chances to interact with him and others that were close to him and just, I remember being excited after every one of those, just how people talked about him, how great of a guy he is, how much energy he brings, just a guy that truly loves football,” shared McCloughan.<\/p>\n “It’s hard to find guys that look like that physically, but then at the same time, have the makeup that he does, just being a great teammate, showing up to work, excited every day, caring about others.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hunter’s size immediately stood out Lee Hunter is a mountain in the middle of the defensive line. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2075],"tags":[4955,79,235,260,2567,7,81,6,236],"class_list":{"0":"post-875301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-2026-nfl-draft","9":"tag-app-news","10":"tag-carolina","11":"tag-carolina-panthers","12":"tag-carolinapanthers","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116471928205315287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875301","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=875301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}