Cat Scratch Reader
Here at Cat Scratch Reader we have counted down the final 100 days leading up to the Carolina Panthers season opener by for at least the past ten years. We’ve always done this by highlighting the current player on the roster whose jersey number matches the day on the countdown. This year, we decided to change that up a bit by counting down our own list of the Top 100 Panthers of all time. This does not correspond to jersey number, does not need to be somebody who wore a jersey, and will in no way be controversial.
The Carolina Panthers have only played 31 NFL seasons, and it hasn’t exactly been 31 seasons of excessive success. That means if you’re good enough, you can rapidly ascend the historical lists surrounding this franchise, whether that be the record books or this very official ranking of the top 100 Panthers of all time. That applied to Ikem Ekwonu.
Ekwonu was born and raised in Charlotte and grew up a Panthers fan, which earns him brownie points out of the gate. He attended Providence Day High School in Charlotte before heading up to Raleigh to play college football at NC State. He was only a three star recruit and took a while to get time on the field, but once he did, he immediately established himself as one of the best offensive linemen in the ACC. In three seasons, he was twice named to an All-ACC team and was a unanimous All American in his final season. That led to him being the sixth overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft by his hometown Carolina Panthers.
While Ekwonu hasn’t been perfect, he’s been a very good left tackle from the day he entered the facility. That’s a very significant accomplishment for such a young player. And perhaps most importantly, he’s been a stalwart on an offensive line that’s had periods of rampant injury problems. He played every snap in the first two years of his career before missing two weeks in the middle of the 2024 season.
Unfortunately that injury luck seemed to run out in the 2025 playoffs. He ruptured his patella tendon in the loss to the Rams, and that puts a whole lot up in the air. It’s a brutal injury that takes a long time to recover, and it can be difficult for guys to get all the way back to their old selves. Since it happened in the playoffs, he’s almost guaranteed to miss the start of the season, and there’s no telling when he’ll be ready to go. The Panthers did draft a tackle that will challenge for the left tackle spot in Ekwonu’s absence, but perhaps that means Ekwonu could shift to the right side to take over for Taylor Moton when he retires.
The injury has Ekwonu’s future somewhat in flux, but prior to that, his reliability and generally solid play at a premium position like left tackled as quickly...
