Taylor Moton is really good at football.
Last year, he was the 19th-ranked tackle in the NFL (out of 140 graded by Pro Football Focus). But when you look at him historically, those numbers are even better. A deeper dive into the PFF numbers shows how good he's been over a long period of time.
Since 2018, when he entered the starting lineup and only briefly left, Moton ranks 14th among all tackles in pass blocking grade by PFF, among those with a minimum of 1,500 snaps. He actually has the second-most pass blocking snaps among those tackles during that span, speaking to both his durability and the fact that the Panthers have been behind a lot during some of those years.
The list of guys ranked higher than Moton over that time reads like a who's who of NFL pass-protectors: David Bakhtiari, Laremy Tunsil, Tristan Wirfs, Andrew Whitworth, Terron Armstead, Trent Williams, Jake Matthews, Ronnie Stanley, Rashawn Slater, Lane Johnson, Garett Bolles, Tyron Smith, and Mitchell Schwartz.
Nine of the 13 were first-round picks, and all 13 have either earned a spot on the All-Pro team (33 total appearances), the Pro Bowl (51), or both. The point is, to be better at this than Taylor Moton, you have to be really, really good at football.
That he's done it for teams that haven't had playoff success, or playoff appearances even, speaks to his level of achievement. There's something to be said about the persistence of hard work without tangible reward being the definition of faith, but that's starting to become another Taylor Moton intangible.
Tangibly, Taylor Moton is really good at his job. And now he'll be with three other guys who are good at theirs (Robert Hunt, Damien Lewis, and Ikem Ekwonu) for the next two years, which is good for everyone, especially Bryce Young. (Center Austin Corbett, also good at his job, is the only one on a one-year deal.)
That doesn't need to be lost in all the whirl about cuts and trades and whatnot. Keeping Taylor Moton around is a very good thing the Panthers did last week; that comes with the benefit of freeing up some cap room in the short term, which could prove useful.
Now, onto the mail.