Jaycee Horn named team's Ed Block Courage Award winner

CHARLOTTE — The stuff Jaycee Horn is in the training room for now is practically nothing after the year he went through last season.

And the way he got through it got the attention of his peers.

“It was a process; that’s probably the best way to explain it,” Horn said. “You have your highs and lows, but my main thing was to keep going. To take the good with the good and the bad with the bad.

“But don’t stop going and trying to get better.”

Horn suffered a broken foot in Week 3 of his rookie season, which knocked him out for the rest of the year. It was a difficult process for the first-round pick, who was already showing signs of being the kind of shutdown corner you expect when you take one with the eighth overall pick.

But the hardest part for Horn was occasionally the isolation he felt. Injured players are there but not really there, so his absence from the normal routine was as much of an adjustment as the physical pain.

“Being around your teammates, just being around football, makes you feel like you’re part of the team,” Horn said. “Because when you’re hurt, you’re not in practice, you’re not in meetings, you feel like you’re kind of just existing. Being around teammates definitely helped.”

Things were going well for Horn throughout the offseason, and through the spring, he was feeling good and eager to get back out one the field.

But when he arrived in Spartanburg for training camp, he began to feel a new sensation, a soreness in his foot which sidelined him for weeks of the prep work he had been building up to.

“In camp, I kind of struggled with it,” he said. “I had been doing good all offseason, but when I got to camp, it got sore on me, so that was kind of frustrating. Because in OTAs, I felt great playing on it every day. In the offseason, when I was training, I felt great. But as soon as I got to camp, it got achy and started bothering me, which it hadn’t done in three months. So that was the most frustrating part.

“The things I did to get through it, I just surrounded myself by my teammates. We were in Wofford, so we were around everybody a lot. This (athletic) training staff, they just kept me in the right headspace, kept me rehabbing and doing the necessary things.”

The work paid off because Horn quickly returned to the high level of play they got a brief glimpse of last year.

He came back to lead the team with three interceptions this season and tied for the team lead with seven passes defended. According to Pro Football Focus, the 28 receptions he allowed this season were the second-fewest among starting cornerbacks in the league.

“By the time the season came, I was good,” he said. “I think I’m over the hill as far as my foot.”

Of course, the end of the year brought a new problem, as he suffered a broken wrist in the late-season win over Detroit, which kept him out of the decisive game at Tampa the following week.

Horn admitted that if they’d have won that game, he’d have likely closen to “club it up” and play the following week against the Saints.

Now, the cast is gone, and he’s recovering from a much less serious issue. He joked that if last year’s foot injury was a 7 or 8 on the pain scale, this one barely registers.

“This is a 1,” Horn said. “I ain’t worried about it. This is just a little knick-knack; I’ll be good.”

And this time, he knows he’s surrounded by people who have his back, which helps make the process easier to handle.

PANTHERS’ PAST WINNERS OF THE ED BLOCK COURAGE AWARD

2018 – Julius Peppers

2017 – Graham Gano

2016 – Luke Kuechly

2015 – Cam Newton

2014 – Greg Olsen

2013 – Ryan Kalil

2012 – Ron Edwards

2011 – Thomas Davis

2010 – Jordan Gross