Seat Belt Treatment: Panthers’ Jaycee Horn has been rooting for WRs since college
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – During a late September game between two South Charlotte high schools, Myers Park cornerback Orlando Brown broke up a deep pass against Ardrey Kell and celebrated with a seatbelt gesture after “pinning” the wide receiver.
Watch a football game at any level and you’re likely to see a defensive back breaking up a pass breakup or seatbelt interception, a celebration that originated in Columbia, S.C., during the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season .
That’s where a pair of South Carolina high school starters — Jaycee Horn and Israel Mukuamu — came up with the move during a walk-through as the Gamecocks prepared to play at LSU that week.
“A lot of guys said ‘belt’ back then. So I just started saying seat belt. Just like (when) you fasten a seat belt, you fasten it. We both thought about a gesture we could make. And we came up with the across the chest,” Horn said.
“We were going to do it no matter who got the first stop of the game. We’ve been doing it in practice all week. When we did it in practice, it was just funny. And when I got a stop in the game, I just did it in the game. And it went from there.”
After defending a fade pass in the first quarter into the end zone intended for LSU freshman tight end Arik Gilbert, Horn pulled an imaginary seatbelt across his chest and snapped it into place. The Tigers would win 52-24. But when Horn’s personal trainer posted a video of the game on social media after the match, a new move was born.
Let him know! @I_Am_OD3 pic.twitter.com/k4wDyrPH5s
— Jaycee Horn (@jayceehorn_10) January 3, 2021
Four years later, Horn has noticed that everyone from Pop Warner players to women’s basketball standouts are putting on their seat belts after defensive stops. Green Bay Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander has added his own flourish to what he calls the sword. Alexander even claims that he started the craze, which Horn firmly disputes.
“You can tell,” said Horn, the Carolina Panthers’ fourth-year corner. “The first time anyone ever put on a seat belt, we played against LSU in Baton Rouge last year. Go see if you see a belt celebration somewhere before that match.’
Mukuamu, a safety for the Dallas Cowboys, appreciates how widespread the celebration has become. But like Horn, he wants to make sure people understand its history.
“It’s global. I think this is the first thing DBs want to do as soon as they get a bat. They want to put on the seat belt,” he said. “But remember: Seat belts started in South Carolina.”
It makes sense that Horn would be at the forefront of an iconic party. The 24-year-old of course passes that by.
During a nationally televised game in the Superdome in 2003, New Orleans Saints receiver Joe Horn – Jaycee’s father – famously celebrated the second of his four touchdowns in a loss to the New York Giants by He grabbed a flip phone he had stashed in the stuffing around the goal post and pretend to call home. Horn’s choreographed call earned him a $30,000 fine from the NFL, the same amount imposed on Michael Thomas when the Saints receiver paid tribute to Horn with his own cell phone celebration 15 years later.
Jaycee Horn said he’s not in the same league as his father when it comes to showmanship. “He was a lot more splashy than me,” he said. “Recipients are divas, so he was definitely one of them.”
The younger Horn credits his father with giving him an attitude equal parts confidence and aggression.
“A lot of that comes from him and my older brother. That’s exactly the style he wanted us to play with,” Horn said. “He damn near wanted us to think of it as war when we stepped between the lines. That’s the mentality he had and I try to play with that.”
Jaycee Horn has defended a career-high 10 passes this season. (Photo: Carolina Panthers)
Joe Horn settled in an exclusive community in suburban Atlanta after ending his career with the Falcons. There was a field that held youth league games just minutes from his house, but Joe had his boys play in the more rugged Metro Atlanta league, which produced NFL stars like Cam Newton and Eric Berry.
“This competition plays in rain, sleet or snow,” said Joe Horn The Athletics in 2021. “I say that with a capital H – in the Hood. And (Jaycee) grew up with that attitude.”
Horn and Mukuamu, natives of South Carolina who moved to Louisiana before his senior year of high school, arrived in Columbia in 2018. Both played as freshmen and were close on and off the field.
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Midway through their junior season, the start of which was pushed back a month due to COVID, the two started kicking around the idea of a signature party.
“All year long Jaycee kept saying car seat, seat belt, whatever. And one day during the walkthroughs, I just thought this was fun,” Mukuamu said, showing a reporter the cross-chest gesture. “It was right before the LSU game. We were like, ‘It’s hard.’ The first time it ever came out was the LSU game. He ended up doing it first. … It just took off.”
Not long after Horn debuted it, Mukuamu followed with another safety after intercepting Tigers quarterback TJ Finley and returning the pick 56 yards to set up a Gamecocks’ field goal.
The move might have remained an inside joke between Horn and Mukuamu if Atlanta defensive backs coach Oliver Davis hadn’t posted a video of Horn’s first seat belt on his Instagram Story.
“He posted it and it blew up,” Horn said. “All the kids in Atlanta were doing it. There were other students who did it.”
Horn and Mukuamu played only two more games for South Carolina after the LSU loss. After Will Muschamp was fired in November following a 2-5 start in the 10-game schedule, both defensive backs opted to prepare for the NFL draft. Horn revealed at his pro day that he had several family members who had contracted COVID, including an aunt who died of complications from it.
Matt Rhule attended Horn’s pro day in Columbia, where the junior improved his draft status by running a 4.37-second 40, performing 19 reps on the 225-pound bench press and recording a vertical jump of 41.5 inches. A month later, the Panthers took Horn with the No. 8 pick, one spot ahead of Alabama cornerback Patrick Surtain.
Before Horn’s rookie year, he and his agent Trey Smith tried to trademark the seat belt, but were told that a move or a dance cannot be trademarked. Horn had printed a number of seat belt-style T-shirts for friends and family, but his idea to launch a seat belt-style clothing line died due to the trademark ruling.
“Then I started seeing other sports do it. Then they put it on Madden. I’m like, ‘Damn, they took my cell,'” Horn said. “It is what it is. I still enjoyed seeing how everyone did.”
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Mukuamu has taken the same approach even when Cowboys rookie cornerback Caelen Carson, a fifth-round pick out of Wake Forest, showed up in Dallas with the X handle of “@walkinseatbelt.”
“I just let people drive it,” Mukuamu said. “At the end of the day, we are all DBs. So it’s just fun to do.”
When Derwin James broke up Joe Burrow’s Hail Mary pass on the final play of Sunday night’s NFL game, the Los Angeles Chargers safety ran off the field and put on his seat belt. Safety Nick Emmanwori has kept the South Carolina tradition alive, while Brown — the Myers Park corner and son of Chicago Bears offensive coordinator Thomas Brown — is one of the high school players tying up opponents.
“The cool thing for me is I’ve seen it in some basketball games with female basketball players doing it,” Horn said. “I’ve seen little kids do it on social media (in) Little League games.
Alexander, a Charlotte native and two-time Pro Bowler, suggested he was the inspiration for all the NFL defensive backs who copied the move.
“Everyone is celebrating my party,” Alexander told Green Bay reporters last fall. “Man, come on, man. You might as well put on 23 jerseys in the entire league, man. Damn.”
Jaire Alexander on the Packers CB group: “It’s going to be Strap City. We might as well go ahead and get that out there right away. We’re just waiting for 21 (Eric Stokes) to come back.” pic.twitter.com/Ie2FYvLy6R
— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) July 31, 2023
Alexander’s move is slightly different. He raises his arms to the sky and then brings them across his chest to his other hip, as if he were sheathing a sword. Alexander corrected reporters last year who called it a seat belt.
“No,” he said. “It’s a sword.”
So maybe there’s room in NFL secondaries for both the seat belt and the sword.
“He does his own thing. They do it like pointing to the sky and then tie it up,” Horn said. “But that came from South Carolina, man. Israel Mukuamu and Jaycee Horn. They’re the two guys who made the seat belt.”
Neither does Panthers special teams captain Sam Franklin. After taking action in point coverage, Franklin places his hands at hip height and pushes them toward the ground, indicating that his opponents are “little children.” But Franklin likes what Horn’s celebration represents.
“You have to go out there and have a good reputation to put a seatbelt on someone,” he said. “The seat belt actually says, ‘I brought your child home safely.’ That’s what the seat belt is for. You have to guide them safely back to the sidelines.’
After a few injury-plagued seasons, Horn is having the best year of his career. With seven games remaining, Horn has already surpassed his record for passes defensed from last season by 10. His completion percentage of 45.8 ranks fourth among defensive backs with a minimum of 250 coverage snaps, according to Next Gen Stats.
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So Horn has reason to celebrate, but the irony is that he rarely puts on his seat belt these days. By his estimate, he’s done it three times this season, including on a pass breakup against former teammate DJ Moore during a Week 5 loss at Chicago.
The unique move he and Mukuamu came up with in the shadow of Williams-Bryce Stadium has become too popular for Horn’s liking.
‘I don’t do it like that anymore, because they took the sauce away. It’s not the same anymore if everyone does it,” Horn said. “It has to be a special (play).”
Horn doesn’t take off the seat belt, but only saves it for big moments. So buckle up: you never know when it will come.
(Top photo of Horn: Brooke Sutton / Getty Images)
