CHARLOTTE, NC – After the Carolina Panthers’ 47-10 loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, things went from bad to worse for them: They learned that Pro Bowl defensive tackle Derrick Brown suffered a knee injury that may be season-ending for him.

A league source confirmed to ESPN that Brown will undergo surgery to repair an apparent meniscus injury.

It’s unclear when Brown sustained the injury. He played 60 of Carolina’s 66 snaps in the worst opening loss in team history and the fourth-worst loss overall.

Brown was just coming off the 2023 season in which he recorded the most tackles in a season for an NFL defensive lineman with 103.

Carolina rewarded the seventh pick of the 2020 draft earlier this year with a four-year, $96 million contract extension.

Brown was Carolina’s best defensive player and arguably the team’s best player. Although he never had more than three sacks in a season, new coach Dave Canales challenged him to reach eight to 10 in 2024, which Brown believed was achievable.

NFL Network first reported on Brown’s injury.

Brown, 26, played 89.1% of Carolina’s defensive snaps in 2023, second only to linebacker Frankie Luvu and impressive for a man his size (6’5″, 315 pounds) in a 3-4, fixed-rotation system.

Second-year player LaBryan Ray is also among the candidates to replace Brown, but general manager Dan Morgan will likely have to add one or more players to the position, which already has few players.

But replacing Brown goes beyond his game performance.

“It’s the work ethic of guys like Derrick Brown. Our best players are also our hardest workers,” Canales said before the season. “So there’s not a lot of wiggle room for the rest of the group to pick and choose what they want to do. They just have to go for it, they have to work hard, the individual drills and all that stuff.”