Former Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Tershawn Wharton is the first player from Missouri Science & Technology in Rolla, Missouri to start a professional football game since the 1930s. After the Carolina Panthers signed him to a three-year deal worth up to $54 million in the offseason, he’s preparing for his sixth NFL season — and making quite an impression on Carolina defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero.
“When you first meet him, he’s got a presence about him,’’ Evero told ESPN. “He’s got an aura about him. You watch him in the classroom, he’s a notetaker. He’s into it all the time in the weight room, on the field. And we know that he’s coming from a place that has a really great culture and that played a really good defense — especially on the D-line.’’
It hasn’t been easy for Wharton to reach this point. Signed to the Chiefs as an undrafted free agent during the coronavirus pandemic, he had to find a way to make the team in a season without offseason practices and preseason games. But Wharton always found a way to eliminate his own insecurities.
“When you get picked up, you feel like you belong automatically,” he told reporters during November of his rookie season. “You’re playing with champions [and] competing every day, The more and more I made a few plays in training camp, I realized, ‘Oh, I can do this.’”
And for the first time since joining the league, he’ll be back in the role he had in Rolla: being a leader on the defensive line — and the interior player offenses were focused on stopping.
“At S&T, I was the guy they were going to come after,” Wharton recalled in 2020. “Now being on a team with pros, I’m not really the guy they’re going to come after all of the time. That helped [my transition to the NFL].
“At S&T my senior and junior year, I was a leader on he team. Right now [with the Chiefs], it’s just kind of back to square one where you’re coming in as a freshman at any school.”
Now he’s showing the way for young players like the Panthers’ fifth-round defensive tackle Cam Jackson.
“[I’m] just showing these young guys how to transition,” he explained. “Being able to show them the way, on and off the field, on how to do things and establish that culture of winning.’’
Evero has noticed it.
“This guy has a purpose in everything that he does,’’ he said of his new defensive tackle.. “And it’s really, really impressive to watch.”
In Panthers quarterback Bryce Young, Wharton sees some of the attitude that Patrick Mahomes brought to the offense in Kansas City.
“They both have a little vibe,’’ he noted. “It’s not too uppity. They’re cool guys. They’re relaxed. Some people walk into the locker room and don’t feel they can talk to the quarterbacks. When Bryce is around, he talks to everybody. Patrick did the same thing. He wasn’t standoffish. Everybody could talk to him.’’
Wharton wasn’t Carolina’s first choice. They signed him after the New England Patriots outbid the Panthers for former Philadelphia Eagles defensive lineman Milton Williams. But now, he’ll be the main man to bring Carolina’s run defense back from its abysmal 2024 season, in which it gave up 3,057 rushing yards — the third-worst mark of the modern era.
“It’s just a mentality, man,’’ said Wharton. “Don’t let a man dominate you with his game. That’s what we’re coming to do. Everybody in that room — and on that defense — knows it’s going to stop.’’