Last season, the Carolina Panthers played a zone defensive scheme more often than any other team in the NFL, according to Pro Football Focus.

There are a lot of reasons why a team might prefer playing more zone. In Carolina’s case, the major one may be about hiding its holes in the secondary.

The Panthers have the top linebacker corps in the league and all three starters have no problem covering receivers one on one. The problem is their defensive backs get burned for big gains far too much when playing man. That’s also a reason why they blitzed more than most teams in the NFL, too.

Should we expect a change this year?

Our guess is new defensive coordinator Eric Washington will want to rely on a four man rush and play more man defense in general than Steve Wilks did. The question is if he has the personnel to pull it off.

The Panthers tried to upgrade their secondary this offseason by bringing in several new faces.

Donte Jackson is now the fastest corner on the team, Ross Cockrell should be an upgrade over Daryl Worley and Rashaan Gaulden has enough versatility to make things interesting.

This group is untested, though. It’s impossible to tell at this point if they are capable of playing better one on one coverage than last year’s group.

If they can, it will give Washington a lot more options and take some pressure off the front seven, which has carried a very heavy load the last two years.