Carolina trades with Chiefs for receiver Ihmir Smith-Marsette

The Panthers added to their roster early Tuesday, with the team announcing that they had traded for receiver Ihmir Smith-Marsette.

Carolina swapped conditional seventh round picks in 2025 with the Chiefs to acquire the former Iowa Hawkeye. Today all teams need to be down to a league mandated 53-man roster. So the Panthers will need to make an extra cut.

Smith-Marsette turned heads in this preseason. He caught nine passes for 195 yards worth, which was the second highest total in the NFL. Plus, he scored two touchdowns. Smith-Marsette primarily played when Chiefs backup quarterback Blaine Gabbert was in the game.

For some background, he’s a former Iowa Hawkeye star who earned offensive MVP of the 2019 Holiiday Bowl. The Vikings selected him in the fifth round of the 2021 NFL Draft. He’s also played for the Bears and Chiefs. He’s seen action in 16 games with the Bears and Vikings. The Chiefs used him on the practice squad last season.

When he played, Ihmir Smith-Marsette caught 16 passes for 131 yards a pair of touchdowns. He’s a big-play receiver with a career average of 21.8 yards a catch.

Ihmir Smith-Marsette also was ace returnman in college

He also can play special teams, excelling in them at Iowa. .He won the Big Ten Conference’s Rodgers-Dwight Return Specialist of the Year award in 2018. As a returnman with the Hawkeyes, he totaled and 53 returns for 1,520 yards. That’s an average of 28.7 yards per return. He also scored two touchdowns.

His performance in the Chiefs final preseason game likely caught the eyes of the Panthers. He caught a 43-yard touchdown pass from Gabbert and totaled 101 receiving. Against the Browns in the preseason finale, Smith-Marsette put up 101 yards on four catches, including a 43-yard touchdown reception from quarterback Blaine Gabbert.

Blaine Gabbert to Ihmir Smith-Marsette for the 43-yard TD!

📺: #CLEvsKC on NFL Network
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— NFL (@NFL) August 26, 2023

And here’s an odd stat for an NFL player. He came to football late in high school. Why? He played water polo in the eighth and ninth grades.

The Panthers still have 80 on the roster, so they’ll need to cut 27 players. However, with Ihmir Smith-Marsette, the Panthers appear to have shored up their depth at receiver after four wideouts missed the preseason finale because of injuries. Those receivers were DJ Chark Jr., Terrace Marshall Jr., and Laviska Shenault Jr.