Tetairoa McMillan didn't need a scheme change to have a monster rookie year. He caught 70 balls on 120 targets for 1,014 yards and 7 touchdowns in 2025, good enough to walk away with Offensive Rookie of the Year honors in Carolina. But according to NFL Network's Cameron Wolfe, the Panthers are done treating him as a strictly outside X-receiver — they're planning to line him up in the slot a lot more often this season.
The report that kicked off the buzz: Carolina wants McMillan working more out of the slot in 2026.
It's not a random tweak. McMillan came out of Arizona with real production from the slot in college, and the numbers back up why Carolina would want to move him around — he was reportedly far more efficient per route run working from the inside than from the outside during his final two college seasons. For a Panthers passing game that's still figuring out its identity around Bryce Young, unlocking a bigger, more versatile alignment for their best receiver is an obvious lever to pull.
The wrinkle is that the slot in Carolina isn't empty real estate. Adam Thielen has made a career out of winning from the slot, and Jalen Coker emerged last season as a legitimate second option who also does a lot of his damage lining up inside. Dave Canales has talked about wanting a deep receiver room, and by the end of last season he'd already pegged McMillan and Coker as the top two options heading into the offseason. Squeezing more slot reps for McMillan means somebody's alignment has to shift.
There's also a health question hanging over all of this. McMillan dealt with a foot issue that got relabeled as ankle soreness through OTAs and minicamp, limiting him to individual work rather than full team drills. He's said he's feeling good and expects to be full-go for the start of training camp, and the Panthers have echoed that timeline — but until he's actually running a full route tree in pads, any scheme projection is still theoretical.
Fantasy managers are already circling this. A receiver who moves inside typically racks up more high-percentage targets and shakes free of press coverage more easily, which usually means a bump in catch rate even if the per-catch explosiveness dips slightly. If Carolina really commits to funneling more of McMillan's routes through the slot, it reshapes not just his target share but Bryce Young's whole underneath passing game — and it's the kind of subtle scheme note that tends to matter a lot more in September than it does in late July.