The Carolina Panthers are entering the 2026 season in a weird place. On the surface, the wheels are falling off before the bus has even left the station. Their two starting offensive tackles, Taylor Moton and Ikem Ekwonu, are on various reserve lists, along with starting defensive tackle Tershawn Wharton, and all are expected to miss the first four to six weeks. Their favorite play-all-five-spots utility lineman, Brady Christiansen is out for at least another month recovering from an injury suffered
last season. Nic Scourton, a projected starting outside linebacker coming off a breakout rookie season, is out for the season. So too is their third round pick, wide receiver and human highlight reel Chris Brazzell II. They were so disappointed with the middle of the defense during the preseason that they found a free agent linebacker who stayed home during the whole offseason in Bobby Okereke and signed him into a starting role.
In short, the offensive line never even got assembled before it started falling apart and the defense is shaky and untested at best. So why aren’t we all freaking out? Why are a lot of us looking around the division and thinking “we might be able to repeat”?
Simply put, this is the deepest roster the Carolina Panthers have fielded in years. Injuries happen every year to every team. Depth, as often as anything, separates the teams that are ready to compete from the rest. Rasheed Walker and 2026 first round draft pick Monroe Freeling are maybe the most capable backups the Panthers have ever had at the same time. Both look capable of starting for a lot of teams. Here? They are just holding down the fort.
Instead of an injury to a third round pick screwing over all of our hopes and dreams for the wide receivers corps, Brazzell’s injury just clarified the training camp battle for the deepest room we’ve seen in a minute. Instead of wondering who was going to step up as a number two receiver behind DJ Moore or Steve Smith, we spent training camp arguing over who would take the fifth and sixth roster spots. There was a large contingent of people, even after Brazzell went down, that thought the team might legitimately keep seven wide receivers.
That kind of depth affords the Panthers the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised, instead of dependent upon, any signs of positive development from Xavier Legette.
There are still a thousand questions to answer regarding the 2026 regular season. Not least among them is whether or not the team will get off to their near traditional slow start to September. An extra tally in the win column in the next few weeks could make all the difference for the team’s playoff hopes when their competition is the always fluky NFC South.
A thousand more questions will arise when the Panthers actually start playing games on Sunday. The one thing we aren’t questioning is the ability of this team to roll with the first round of punches they received. Depth across the entire roster has improved dramatically since Dan Morgan and Dave Canales started working together. Where they go from here is simply the story of the season. That’s a big step up from the foregone conclusion it would have been even three years ago.
