CHARLOTTE — Physical, energetic, smart, tough, tall, a dawg, "a juice guy."
The list of adjectives and monikers Panthers coaches and players used to describe Feleipe Franks this week could feel like a thesaurus (and maybe Urban Dictionary).
"He's 100 percent, 100 miles an hour," Dave Canales said of his tight end and core special teamer. "Physical player using his hands, lots of energy when he makes plays; he pops up guys, kind of everyone's energy goes up when Feleipe makes a play."
Franks has been making more and more plays over the last few weeks, turning himself into a valuable special teams player predicated on one overarching quality that encompasses all of the above — pure competitor.
It's a description belied by the fact that it took 20 minutes for Franks to even sit for an interview because he was dominating the ping pong table in the middle of the Panthers locker room on Thursday and based on the impenetrable rules first established on the playground, winner stays. And he just kept winning.
"I love competition," Franks smiled as he finally ambled to his locker. For the record, he hadn't actually lost a game. He just needed to move on about his day, and winning three games in a row had already taken up a significant chunk of time.
It's that kind off love which has kept Franks around the league four seasons after first arriving and two seasons after the trajectory of his football career shifted in a way he hadn't imagined. Ping pong tables are like the NFL. You earn any longevity you create.
"(Competition) always brings the best out of you," Franks said. "I mean, you have to stay at the top of the tier or lose your job."
Franks has been faced with that possibility a couple of times in his career, and each time, back against the wall, he's come out swinging, refusing to give up a job. He was faced with that possibility again two years ago. And, like always, he swung.
Two seasons ago, the Atlanta Falcons sat down their backup quarterback and had a blunt conversation. For a chance to stay in this league, they told the lifetime passer he needed to be a tight end.
Franks had started at QB for four seasons in the SEC (three at Florida and one at Arkansas) and signed with the Falcons as an undrafted free agent, backing up Matt Ryan and Josh Rosen at first.
"There was never really like a decision because you don't really have the decision like that," Franks admitted this week, ahead of the Panthers welcoming the Falcons for a Week 6 showdown. "But yeah, it was a tough conversation."
It's not uncommon to pick your way through an NFL locker room and find former quarterbacks who have been converted to new positions to give them more versatility and longevity in the league. If someone is the best player at their small high school, they're probably the quarterback.
Panthers' punter Johnny Hekker is one of those former quarterbacks turned positional player. He knows it can be a tough transition, and he didn't have four years of starting as QB at a Division I program either.
"It takes a lot of humility for a guy to look himself in the mirror and say, 'Hey, do I bang my head against the wall trying to play quarterback, or do I find a way? Do I find a way to make a way and just get on the field?' Feleipe has done that," Hekker said, tipping his hat.
"It wasn't the ideal thing that I wanted to do," Franks admitted. "But, you know, I think just like going home after that day and taking a deep breath and just putting my pride aside and, you know, it's a lot bigger than me. Whether it's for my son or my family, I just put the pride aside and was like, you know, let's go get it, regardless of whatever position I'm playing. So that's the biggest thing, put my pride aside in that transition."
The transition came with another responsibility: playing special teams, because backup tight ends are at the heart of every team's special teams units. He took the first special teams snap of his career in 2022.
"But I think at that time, there was still sort of half his mind on, I'm a quarterback, and this isn't really my thing," long snapper JJ Jansen suggested. "And now he's kind of put his full effort into, 'I'm a tight end, and I'm a special teams player,' and I think with each passing week, he's also gaining confidence, like 'I am good at this.'"
In less than two years, Franks has found a niche for himself as a core special teamer.
"One of the things that he brings to the group is incredible speed, length, and power," Jansen said. "Usually, special teams guys have maybe two of the three but not all three. So, you've got a guy who's 6-6, he runs really, really well, he's strong, he's violent, he's athletic."
Franks' snaps in that phase have grown every week of the season, now playing an average of 69 percent of the special teams plays, effectively all the ones that require someone to run the length of the field.
"He's an outstanding athlete," special teams coordinator Tracy Smith said of Franks. "First of all, he's smart, he's tough. He plays incredibly hard with a passion that everybody can feel or see. It's obvious every day, he takes this opportunity; he takes his job very seriously. He holds special teams in high regard, and it shows."
The cerebral part of Franks' game is something teammates have noticed quickly. Sam Franklin Jr., the season-long special teams captain who likewise found his niche in the kicking game, has been sidelined as he recovers from a broken foot. But his bird's eye view of practice has allowed him to closely watch Franks—who filled in for Franklin as ST captain one week.
"His energy, his effort, and practice, as well as just being able to take what he's seeing from the film and taking it to the game. He has a real understanding of who he's going to get, what they do, and what he can do to help us," Franklin said, describing what he's seen from Franks.
Added Nick Scott, another core teamer: "Feleipe is a dog in every sense of the word. So, that being the case, he's built for special teams. Like special teams, it is like a six-second war all throughout the game. And strongest man wins, fastest man wins, whoever wants it more wins.
"And other than myself, when Feleipe is on the field, I don't think anybody wants to make an impact more."
Wanting it more has defined Franks' career. Even when logic should have dictated a different outcome, he's written a different story. As a redshirt freshman QB at Florida in 2017, Franks first burst onto the scene with a 63-yard (all on air) walk-off touchdown pass to beat Tennessee. It was a play designed to get (coincidentally) then-Gators kicker Eddy Piñeiro in field goal range. Instead, the young buck Franks went for the touchdown and won the game with a play still circulated yearly on social media.
In 2018, Franks was benched for current Tampa Bay Buccaneers backup quarterback Kyle Trask after poor play. Before Trask could start a game, though, he suffered a foot injury during practice. Franks took back over that week and led a comeback win against South Carolina, driven primarily by the will to prove everyone wrong.
In 2019, an entrenched and beloved starter by that point, Franks was taken down by a season-ending broken ankle early in the season. Trask took over for good, and Franks finished his last year of eligibility at Arkansas. In that 2020 season, he helped lead the Razorbacks to their first SEC win in 20 games, marking a career that then Gators coach Dan Mullen noted had helped turn around two Division-I programs.
All those years searching for wins in whatever way possible have shaped Franks' mindset, and thus his career. It was best exemplified this season in a tackle he made against the Chargers on the opening kickoff. A flag for a facemask overshadowed the big play on the field, but the initial tackle stood out on tape, an example of the energy Canales and Smith want their special teams players to have.
"On that particular play, he's coming from the backside, and it's just, there's just an incredible amount of effort and strain to make the play," Jansen explained. "He catches a face mask, and that's a penalty. But that's such an aggressive play. That's all-out effort. We'll live with those all day long.
"No one even bats an eye because those are sometimes just by chance, how the play works out. But he's been really, really good for us. He's added an intensity to the group efforts."
"That kind of stuff that fires you up, man," Scott said of the play. "If you watch that play, like he made that play purely because he wanted to. That's what I'm talking about. If you have that mindset every time you go out there people are going to feel you, and Feleipe has that."
Leveling the hits is still new for Franks, who spent years avoiding them as a quarterback. In a way, though, according to Smith, experience in the quarterback position helps a player make the transition to being a special teams player. Quarterback, Smith explained, is all about spatial awareness, and on the full-go open-field aspect of special teams, understanding where all 11 guys are can be the difference between making a play and not.
"What I've learned so far is with tight end, special teams, all that, it's not really about how strong you are," Franks explained. "It's a lot about leverage, a lot about technique. That's really just been the hump that I've been trying to get over. Just like fine-tuning my technique because that's what wins blocks, not really like strength and power.
"You talk to some of the quarterbacks just how they visualize things, you want spacing, you want like the difference in obviously the spacing. So it's a clear picture, but yeah, I feel like it helps me; it helps me definitely have a feel for where I need to be when I need to be there on offense or special teams.
"So, I'm like, if I need to keep leverage on my left shoulder, I can do everything right in that play, but if I don't keep leverage, then I'm done."
For years, trying to make that tackle—or any tackle—he probably would have been done.
"One-on-one in the field with a guy that's supposed to make for sure a quarterback missed 10 out of 10 times," Hekker laughed. "But Feleipe has morphed into an athlete, you know, he's worked himself into a guy that can contribute in so many different ways for our team and just stretched it out and made a great open field one-on-one tackle and, you know, face mask aside. He hyped a lot of us up on the sideline."
Another play had the potential to hype up not only the sidelines but the fan base but ultimately didn't go the way the Panthers hoped. Against the Bengals, Hekker lofted a rainbow to Franks on a fake punt that seemed right in his bucket. Franks didn't finish the catch on his first attempt at the play-in game as the Bengals defender got a hand in. But Hekker retained confidence in their ability to pull it off at a later time.
"I don't want to get too much into the Xs and O's; a defender defended us off the ball that we didn't anticipate being there and contributing to making that play," Hekker said. "So, it was just a guy in the right place at the right time. But you give me and Feleipe the opportunity again; he's going to come down with it."
Whether it's as tight end, special teamer, or even long snapper—something Franks has been working on in practice in case the Panthers ever need an emergency one, since the more you can do, the longer you can play—the fourth-year player "hustles his you know what off," according to Hekker, as he continues to find a way to make an impact.
With each play, each game, and each moment of impact, teammates find a few more words to describe Feleipe Franks.
"He is full speed, violent, aggressive, he's trying to carve himself out a prominent role, and he's using special teams to do it, and it's been fantastic," Jansen said.
"He's just a dog," added Scott. "And then he's athletic, he's everything you want, he's strong, he's tall, he can run. So, you add all of that with his mentality, he's a perfect guy for teams."
