Xavier Legette Must 'Earn' First-Team Reps

Nothing is going to be handed to the Carolina Panthers rookie wide receiver.

The external expectations for Carolina Panthers rookie wide receiver Xavier Legette are through the roof. The combination of his size, speed, strength, and explosiveness are what make him such an intriguing player. Very few receivers his size can run and move and run like he can. That being said, there's still a bit of an adjustment that he has to make when going up against NFL corners. He learned that on day one of training camp.

“Training camp started pretty slow for me," Legette told reporters. "I feel like it wasn’t my best, but we got time to continue to make it better. I feel like I wasn’t really attention to detail today, so I need to buy-in on that. I get upset with myself about things like that when I feel like I didn’t have the best day and didn’t leave everything out there on the field.”

During his days at South Carolina, he could just lean on his brute strength to power his way through corners and get to where he needs to be at the top of the route. At this level, it's more about technique and understanding leverage than it is anything else. He's a smart football player and won't take too long to figure things out as we saw some nice plays from him on day two.

While everyone has penciled in Legette as a starter alongside Adam Thielen and Diontae Johnson, the coaching staff has thrown him in with the twos for the majority of the first two practices. Head coach Dave Canales elaborated on his usage with the ones or lack thereof.

“Not really behind I guess, it’s just a matter of…I would love for the guys on our team to earn their place, to earn those valuable reps and he’s getting a lot of work. But there’s a measure of all the young guys…show us. Show us you’re working hard, show us you’re doing all the things the right way so that way we can go in with full confidence and trust. It’s not a knock on him for not doing those things, it’s like keep showing us who you are and showing us what you want to do. I think there’s some good motivation in that.”

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