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- Bryce Young trusted Xavier Legette on a contested 7-yard TD pass that sparked comeback
- Legette overcame sluggish start to 2025 to deliver key catches in Panther win over Miami
- Coach Dave Canales praised Legette’s work ethic and said Legette’s TD made him emotional
With a third-and-4 at the Miami 7, with Carolina trailing 17-0 in the second quarter, Panthers quarterback Bryce Young made a choice.
Even though second-year wide receiver Xavier Legette had had an awful start to his 2025 season and even though Young’s first throw to Legette on the day had resulted in an interception, the QB saw single coverage out wide on No. 17 and knew what he wanted to do.
“We call those ‘trust throws,’” Legette said later. “When he threw me that one right there, it showed me he believed in me.”
Young fired the ball into the end zone where only Legette could get it. With a Dolphins defender draped all over him, Legette reached out and made the kind of contested catch he was drafted to make as a first-round pick in 2024.
“I just wanted to give him a chance,” Young said. “He did a great job adjusting to it.”
It’s hard to overstate how symbolic that play was to the Panthers.
“I was about to cry, honestly,” Panthers coach Dave Canales said.
Legette’s catch started an extraordinary Panthers comeback that ended with Carolina nipping Miami, 27-24, in front of the home crowd at Bank of America Stadium. And although Legette has insisted his confidence never wavered, it certainly helped his teammates have some more confidence when he could make a play like that.
That’s because Legette has been fighting the label “draft bust” all year. First, he had two awful games in which he caught only four of 15 targets for a total of eight yards. Then, he hurt his hamstring and missed the next two games.
So while an injury certainly made it look worse, the fact remained that Legette had less than one first down’s worth of yardage in the first month of the season. And no TDs. So when he scored on Sunday and then, in the fourth quarter, had a key 24-yard catch on the Panthers’ final drive, it was an important step for him.
Said Canales of Legette’s performance: “Unbelievable… When the ball came to him, he made the plays. That’s all we need from him. He showed up today. He had a great look in his eyes. He was excited to get out there.”
As for the touchdown, Canales said he was emotional because he was “just very proud of the work that he’s put in to get himself back out there. Because I see him grinding, I see him attacking the things that he needs to work on in practice. He’s not shying away from it. He hit it head-on, and he looked in the mirror, and he said, ‘These are the things that I need to improve my game on.’ To get him back out there healthy and playing confident was huge.”
Legette still was very much a secondary target for Young, who made rookie Tetairoa McMillan his top target in Week 1 and has stayed with that plan ever since. McMillan had six catches for 73 yards Sunday, leading the Panthers in both those categories.
But Legette is important, as a player who can keep the defense from being tilted quite so much toward McMillan (who still hasn’t scored his first NFL TD). Perhaps that touchdown will lead to more. Legette’s celebration was somewhat muted, however — he didn’t ride an imaginary horse in the end zone, as he did several times in 2024. He said that horse has been “retired” for a while.
But Legette himself got back on the horse on Sunday, which was a promising sign for a Panthers team that needs every offensive weapon it can get.
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Scott Fowler
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