The Carolina Panthers\u2019 video\u2014entitled \u201cPanthers Blueprint\u201d\u2014follows their journey to selecting Monroe Freeling with the 19th overall pick.<\/a> As they waited for the board to fall, the Detroit Lions were a pivot point in the draft. Knowing that the Lions, too, were in the market for an offensive tackle, there was certainly a feeling that Freeling may not be available.<\/p>\nBut perhaps what\u2019s most interesting about the video is that they never seem to mention Blake Miller\u2014the Lions\u2019 actual choice\u2014as someone they were interested in.<\/p>\n
The Panthers clearly took an analytics-forward approach to their draft. Several times throughout the war room video, vice president of football analytics Eric Eager talks about the probability of certain players being available with their pick.<\/p>\n
\u201cFreeling, (Xavier) Proctor is at 70%, one or the other,\u201d Eager says at one point.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you go by offensive tackles\u2019 likelihood of making it to our pick: (Spencer) Fano 12%, Proctor 37%, Freeling 53%, (Caleb) Lomu 70%,\u201d Eager adds.<\/p>\n
No mention of Miller at all. Later, he list off another group of players and their probabilities: the only two tackles mentioned were Proctor and Freeling.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow the two tackles are around a coin flip,\u201d Eager says.<\/p>\n
As a few tackles went off the board\u2014Fano at 9, Francis Mauigoa at 10, Proctor at 12\u2014we see the Panthers try to anticipate what the Lions are do. As the video is framed\u2014and remember that these are team-produced videos that may use some editing techniques to make them look good\u2014it appears they are hoping Freeling falls to them.<\/p>\n
At one point, they actually discuss trading up with the Lions to ensure they get Freeling, talking internally about using a fifth-round pick to get their guy. When Detroit is finally on the clock, they actually call Lions chief operator officer Mike Disner to see if they\u2019d be willing to trade down, but the Lions said they were standing pat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were doing the same thing we would\u2019ve done and that we were planning on doing anyways,\u201d executive VP of football operations Brandon Tilis said.\u201c Which is: we\u2019re not taking calls on this pick unless you\u2019re willing to do something dumb, and we weren\u2019t willing to do anything dumb.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so we see the reaction to the Panthers war room when Detroit opts to take Miller over Freeling.<\/p>\n
Then a shared fist bump, and the rest is history. The Vikings take defensive end Caleb Banks, and the Panthers get Freeling at 19.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey got the guy who they really wanted. They\u2019re really excited about him. And we were pretty fired up when we thought there was a high likelihood that Monroe would be there,\u201d Tilis said.<\/p>\n
A few things to keep in mind here. One is selective editing. While I find it hard to believe the Panthers would\u2019ve preferred Miller over Freeling given everything we see, there could be some things we didn\u2019t see that made it more of a discussion.<\/p>\n
Also, you have to consider each team\u2019s needs at the time. For 2026, the Panthers aren\u2019t likely to have starting left tackle Ikem Ekwonu available due to injury. And they\u2019ve already got long-time veteran Taylor Moton at right tackle. So perhaps Freeling was a better fit for their left tackle vacancy (competing with free agent add Rasheed Walker) than Miller, who has predominantly played right tackle.<\/p>\n
Or maybe they really did just prefer Freeling to Miller. That was certainly a common opinion in the pre-draft process. Only time will tell which tackle will go on to have the better career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More teams continue to roll out their behind-the-scenes videos from the 2026 NFL Draft, and the most recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,448,153,2506,7,147,6],"class_list":["post-908873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-lions","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-lions","tag-detroit-lions-draft","tag-detroit-lions-news","tag-detroitlions","tag-football","tag-lions","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116686281959756074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908873","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=908873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}