Carolina Is Not Building a Roster. It Is Replacing One.
I have written twice now about this offseason's cascading health emergency. Each time, I expected the situation to stabilize. It has not. What Carolina is doing this August is not roster construction — it is triage, and there is a meaningful difference between the two that will matter enormously once the regular season arrives.
The signings look proactive on the surface. Darren Waller, a former Pro Bowl tight end, agreed to a one-year deal on August 13 after Mitchell Evans was carted off the practice field. Kyle Trask was signed as a third quarterback after Haynes King went down with a hamstring injury during the preseason game against Arizona. Brady Christensen was re-signed to shore up the offensive line following Taylor Moton's blood clot diagnosis. Each move, in isolation, is defensible. Taken together, they describe a front office spending its summer plugging holes that keep opening faster than the spackle dries. This is what a team looks like when it is reacting, not planning.
The structural problems underneath these signings are what should alarm Carolina fans. Trevis Gipson, the team's starting linebacker, produced at roughly a third of what a starter at that position typically delivers last season — and now there is no proven depth behind him after Nic Scourton tore his ACL on the first day of training camp. The starting wide receiver slot, held by David Moore, is producing at a fraction of what a functional NFL starter at that position should generate, and the depth behind him is untested. At running back, the starter is similarly far below the production level a contending team needs from that position. These are not new problems. I flagged them in August. They were present in 2025. They remain unresolved.
The numbers from last season make the stakes clear. Bryce Young threw for 3,275 yards and 24 touchdowns, and Tetairoa McMillan — 75 catches, 1,095 yards, 7 touchdowns — was the engine that made the passing game function. The problem is that Carolina went 3-6 away from home last year. Road games expose thin rosters in ways that a friendly crowd cannot paper over, and the Panthers' home-road split was not a quirk of scheduling. It was evidence that the team's competitive ceiling was venue-dependent rather than structural. Emergency signings do not change that calculus.
Waller is the move that will receive the most attention, and I understand why. He is a recognizable name with legitimate credentials, and at 33 on a one-year deal, he gives Young a safety valve with red-zone experience. But note what his arrival actually signals: the Panthers' depth at tight end now runs directly from a 33-year-old on a short-term contract to players with no meaningful production on record. That is not a position group — it is a prayer. The same logic applies at cornerback, where only one player logged meaningful snaps last season, and at the safety position, where the drop from the starter to the backup is enormous.
Teams that patch this many holes this quickly before Week 1 tend to fall apart by November. The 2017 San Francisco 49ers, the 2019 Miami Dolphins, recent Cleveland rosters in their pre-contention years — franchises cycling through emergency depth acquisitions at multiple positions simultaneously share a common outcome: the injuries that seemed manageable in August compound into something catastrophic by midseason. Carolina went 7-3 in close games last season, which is genuinely impressive and speaks to something real about this team's competitive character. But resilience in tight moments cannot compensate for a roster that is structurally compromised at linebacker, wide receiver, offensive line, and now tight end all at once.
My declaration, and I am standing on it: the Panthers will not make the playoffs in 2026. The timeline on when this becomes undeniable is the only variable. My read is that it becomes clear by December, when the injury attrition compounds and the depth chart — already thin before a single regular-season hit — begins to give way entirely. Signing veterans to one-year deals in August is not a roster strategy. It is a holding pattern, and holding patterns do not survive a seventeen-game NFL season.