Carolina Panthers’ Derrick Brown breaks big NFL single-season tackle record

Derrick Brown made some pretty significant history on Sunday.

In the second quarter of the Carolina Panthers’ 2023 regular-season finale on Sunday, Brown recorded his 99th tackle on the season. That made the 2020 first-round pick the first defensive lineman to reach 99 tackles, according to Stats Pass, which started keeping the stat in 1994.

He entered Sunday’s contest at Bank of America Stadium with 96 tackles — which led the league in the category among defensive linemen. He was only three tackles shy of setting a new league record coming into the Panthers’ game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Miami Dolphins lineman Christian Wilkins, who notched 98 tackles in 2022, previously held the record.

Before Wilkins, it was held by JJ Watt in 2014 with 78.

After notching his 99th tackle, Brown was honored on the jumbotron and greeted by a bunch of teammates, including injured linebacker Shaq Thompson.

“It has been an up and down year for us, but these guys, the defensive room, and this team — they come in every single day to work,” Brown told reporters after his team’s 9-0 loss, where he notched seven tackles and a sack.

His final tackles number for the year: 103.

“No matter what the situation is guys still come in here, show up and go to work,” Brown continued. “We didn’t have anybody quit on this team and nobody sat out, nobody tried to sit out the last game, so it’s one of those things where there’s a lot of promising things.”

Despite Brown’s record-breaking season, the 6-foot-5, 269-pound Auburn graduate did not make the NFC Pro Bowl player roster, which was announced earlier this week. He was named a first alternate — a revelation that led to Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero calling the result “a miss” for the “best run defender in the NFL.”

In addition to his high tackles number — which is no doubt, in part, a product of Evero’s 3-4 scheme — Brown also came into Sunday with six tackles for loss, one sack, one interception and 13 quarterback hits on the season. It’s also worth noting that Brown has been the leading force for a defense that ranked third in the NFL in total yards allowed per game (298.1), and is the only defensive lineman in the league to record multiple 10-plus-tackle games this season, per Carolina’s game notes.

Brown is also fifth all-time in most tackles by a defensive lineman in the Panthers’ history. He entered Sunday with 238 career tackles — only behind legends Kawann Short, Charles Johnson, Mike Rucker and Julius Peppers.