Chris Brazzell is a ‘favorite’ of Dave Canales. He’s a new dimension for Bryce Young
For all the noise he made with his 40-yard dash time — a 4.37-second scorcher that landed him in the Top 10 of times among all wide receivers this NFL Scouting Combine — Chris Brazzell II will tell you this off the bat:
He thinks he got swindled.
“You know, at the Combine, the laser, it will get you off any movement,” Brazzell told reporters a few minutes after being selected in the third round of the 2026 draft by the Panthers. “I moved slightly and before I even got to running, it’s like 0.4 seconds already (gone).”
Brazzell smiled, but he was resolute. He thought, after all, he could run a 4.34 — or maybe even a 4.33.
“It would have been a faster 40,” he said. “I was trying to go again, but I had a few phone calls with some guys, and they recommended me not to go again.”
You might be wondering: Fractions of a second, recorded two months ago, for a drill that doesn’t involve catching a football — why does that matter to Brazzell? You could cite his competitiveness, something that’s been within him since he was born, what with his father, Chris, being an NFL Draft pick himself, and his mother, Monique, playing college basketball. You could cite the fact that he’s protective of certain attributes, particularly his speed; it’s what helped him break out at Tennessee this past year and fly up everyone’s draft boards.
But the question, when you take everything in, is legitimate, considering the fact that the Carolina Panthers loved him as a prospect beyond his speed.
How much did they love him?
“He’s one of my favorite players in the draft,” Carolina coach Dave Canales said. “Just his film over the last two years, when you look at Tulane (where he played from 202-23) and you look at Tennessee and combine all of it, you’re going to get a full picture of a route tree. Body control. Ability to do those things.”
He added: “We weren’t expecting Chris to be there. We were sitting there, waiting, and he just kept dropping right to us. And what a great opportunity for us to just again add to that room.”
What do the Carolina Panthers like about Chris Brazzell so much?
If you thought the Panthers might take a wide receiver in the first round of the draft, you weren’t alone. Analysts published mock drafts with the Panthers taking Jordyn Tyson and Omar Cooper Jr. General manager Dan Morgan made it clear that “there is no rule” preventing a team from drafting a wideout in the first round three years in a row — which the Panthers could’ve done last week.
But if you spend some time thinking about the pick, you can’t argue the value the Panthers got in their No. 83 overall selection.
Brazzell is a 6-foot-4, 198-pound target who glides by his opposing corners with ease. That’s especially true in man-to-man coverage — and undeniably true in press coverage. He’s what Lance Zierlein of NFL.com calls a prototypical Z receiver — someone with the “ability to create downfield for an offense thirsty to make more explosive plays.”
And that describes this Panthers offense to a tee.
Carolina wrapped up 2026 with plenty of room for growth when it came to explosive plays. There’s a bad side and a good side to that coin.
The bad side: Bryce Young finished 30th among all quarterbacks in the regular season last year in average depth of target — 6.4 yards in intended air yards, according to Pro Football Reference. And according to Pro Football Focus, he only threw passes that traveled in the air for over 20 yards ... 41 times. That’s less than half of the leader in that category, MVP Matthew Stafford, who had 85 such attempts.
The good side: In the 41 times he threw the ball with 20-plus air yards, Young completed 20 of those passes for 587 yards and eight touchdowns and only two interceptions. His “deep passing grade,” per PFF, was 99.2 — second among all regular starting quarterbacks in the NFL last year, only behind Stafford.
This and the eye test both show that the Panthers can grow in the deep pass game in 2026. And they think that they’ve added a player in Brazzell who can unlock this part of Young’s game — and bring this part of the offense to life.
“We’ve seen how we’ve been able to use Xavier (Legette), TMac (Tetairoa McMillan), Jalen (Coker) with all the intermediate stuff,” Canales said. “And we’ve gone down the field a little bit. And taken some opportunities. But I think about the space created when they know this is a real burner.
“And what that does to safeties, what that does to corners — it just creates space for the whole group.”
Chris Brazzell II is more than speed
Put Brazzell in a box at your own will, however. That is to say: He is more than a mere speedster.
Jordan Trgovac, the scout leading the evaluation of Brazzell, said the team’s newly drafted wideout has every attribute you want to see in a prospect.
“What’s underrated about him is his route-running,” Trgovac said. “Being a taller, more linear guy, it’s very impressive how at the top of his route, he can sink his weight and come back to the ball. So he’s a guy who not only opens up the field vertically, but he’s a guy who can open up the field underneath with that route-running.
“Being able to separate. And then again, coming across the middle, if you need to use him as a possession guy, he’s just an enormous long target that we can use when we want to move the chains a little bit.”
Decisions of how Brazzell fits into this receiver room — which has 10 players on its official roster and will likely have to be pared down to five or six by August’s final cuts — are months away. But the excitement for him is real.
He’s a win on the margins — like in the fractions of a second in the 40-yard dash. The Panthers consider him a win everywhere else, too.
“I’m a guy you can count on when it’s third-and-3, third-and-8 and third-and-20,” Brazzell said. “I feel like I’m a guy who is going to make a play.”
This story was originally published April 28, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Chris Brazzell is a ‘favorite’ of Dave Canales. He’s a new dimension for Bryce Young."
