Last week we asked y’all how the second quarterback spot would shake out during training camp. The Carolina Panthers have three guys vying to back up Bryce Young between Will Grier, Haynes King, and Kenny Pickett. All of them have stories to root for and all of them have reasons to doubt why they’ll make a career in the NFL.
Grier, unsurprisingly, has fans the least excited this season. The Charlotte-area native began his career with the Panthers in 2019, before being cut after the 2021 Sam Darnold
trade. That was the end of the Ron Rivera era and the start of the Matt Rhule fiasco. He has since spent time with five other NFL teams. He clearly has shown something in practice that teams are willing to keep taking a chance on, but most fans are not ready to revisit the memories stirred up by Grier’s return.
The hopes of most fans rest either in pedigree or potential. This seems about right for this portion of the off season.
Pickett was the 20th overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft. He spent two seasons struggling to put it all together with the Pittsburgh Steelers. After the Steelers signed Russell Wilson in 2024, Pickett requested what became the first of many trades. He was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles, who traded him to the Cleveland Browns, who traded him to the Las Vegas Raiders. That took him through 2025 and the end of his rookie contract and up to his signing this off season with the Panthers. Long story short, he seems a serviceable back up, but folks should pump the breaks if they think he’s going to compete for anything beyond the number two spot.
For all that Pickett is a known quantity at this point, King is nothing but unheralded potential. He was an electric, dual-threat quarterback for Georgia Tech (a school that is no longer synonymous with the triple-option), but he wasn’t quite successful enough to garner much draft attention. For all that he was a fun college quarterback, the fact that he went undrafted should give anyone pause in forecasting his future in an already quarterback hungry league. That said, some folks are excited about his potential as a Taysom Hill-type role for the Panthers.
Anything can happen in training camp and the preseason, but my expectation would be for the Pickett to win the back up job and King to make a home for himself on the practice squad. With fierce competition at wide receiver and cornerback, it seems unlikely that Dave Canales and Dan Morgan are going to find room on the 53-man roster for a third quarterback.
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