The Carolina Panthers’ path to its 2026 season opener against the Bears on September 13 ran through one of the busier roster-building stretches of the Dave Canales era. Between the Sunday, August 30 cutdown deadline and the practice squad settling into place on September 1, general manager Dan Morgan and his staff didn’t just trim from 90 to 53. They traded for a defensive lineman, signed a starting-caliber linebacker two days before final cuts, lost a projected starter to the Jets on waivers, and shuffled their offensive line twice in 48 hours.
For a team that improved from 5-12 in Canales’ first year to 8-9 in his second, every one of those calls says something about where Canales and Morgan think this roster still needs work heading into year three.
The most consequential sequence of the week involved a position Carolina thought it had settled. Trevin Wallace, a 2024 third-round pick who started 20 games across his first two seasons, lost the competition for the second inside linebacker job to Claudin Cherelus during camp. Rather than keep Wallace as insurance, Carolina waived him on cutdown day. The Jets claimed him within the waiver window before Carolina could get him to the practice squad, and Carolina lost a former starter for nothing.
Morgan made the swing easier to stomach two days earlier. On August 29, Carolina agreed to terms with veteran inside linebacker Bobby Okereke on a one-year deal, then made it official August 31, placing offensive lineman Brady Christensen on injured reserve with a hamstring injury to open the roster spot.
Okereke brings real production: 110 career games and 95 starts across four years in Indianapolis and three in New York, 805 career tackles, 7.5 sacks, seven interceptions, and 11 forced fumbles. He led the Giants defense with 143 tackles a season ago and was their nominee for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award after three seasons as a team captain. At 6-foot-2, 235 pounds, he is the sideline-to-sideline coverage linebacker Evero’s scheme wants next to Devin Lloyd, and his track record as a play-caller in the middle of the field should translate to reading run fits between the tackles.
This is an insurance signing born of doubt, not a pure upgrade. Okereke is already 30 and is coming off a 2025 season in which a back injury cut his sack total to one, down from 2.5 the year before. Neither Wallace nor Cherelus won the competition outright during the preseason, and that gap is why Morgan went outside the building two days before cutdown. Carolina now rolls into Week 1 with Lloyd and Okereke as the projected starting duo, Cherelus and seventh-round rookie Jackson Kuwatch (Miami of Ohio, pick No. 227) as depth, and Tyrel Dodson stashed on the practice squad as a familiar name to defensive staffers from his time in Buffalo.
If the linebacker corps saw one swap, the offensive line saw a full 72 hours of movement that leaves the position group looking thinner than the initial 53-man count suggested. Start with the injuries already on the books entering cutdown: left tackle Ikem Ekwonu went to the reserve/physically unable to perform list, right tackle Taylor Moton landed on reserve/non-football illness, and neither is on the initial 53. Then Christensen, a versatile piece who’d played through the preseason after tearing his Achilles the year before, went to injured reserve with a new hamstring issue to help clear a roster spot for the Okereke signing.
That’s three projected veteran linemen unavailable for the opener before a single waiver claim happened. Carolina then waived 2023 fourth-round guard Chandler Zavala on August 31 to claim center Corey Bullock off waivers from Baltimore. Bullock is an undrafted 2024 product of North Carolina Central and Maryland who spent his rookie year on Baltimore’s practice squad before appearing in 16 games last season, logging 13 offensive snaps and 55 on special teams; Morgan called him “firm” and “tough” in his post-cuts comments.
Zavala cleared waivers a day later and was brought back as the final man on Carolina’s 17-player practice squad, so the swap is best read as a lateral move for size and center depth rather than an upgrade at guard. Zavala was then waived again I believe.
Carolina now opens the season with rookie first-round tackle Monroe Freeling (Georgia) and offseason free-agent addition Rasheed Walker holding down the edges, on a starting five that no longer includes last year’s top two tackles. Walker, a 2022 seventh-round pick who won Green Bay’s starting left tackle job in 2025 before signing a one-year, $10 million deal with Carolina in March, brings real starting experience, but he and Freeling are still building chemistry with a line that has changed shape twice since cutdown day. Morgan admitted as much, saying the pair “are still kind of gelling in our system” after a rough joint practice before the preseason finale.
Fifth-round rookie center Sam Hecht (Kansas State) and undrafted Canadian tackle Albert Reese IV round out a line that will lean on youth for as long as Ekwonu and Moton stay out. Of everything on this roster, that combination is the biggest risk facing a Bears front in Week 1.
Carolina’s other buzzer-beater move came on the defensive line, where the Panthers sent a 2028 sixth-round pick to the Chargers for defensive tackle TeRah Edwards just before the deadline. Edwards, an undrafted product of Illinois who didn’t appear in a regular-season game as a rookie, forced his way onto Carolina’s radar by playing in all three Chargers preseason games and piling up 10 tackles. Morgan explained the move in plain terms: “We needed some depth there… he stuck out on tape.” A 2028 sixth-round pick costs Carolina little for a player who has barely dressed at the NFL level.
It also exposes how thin the tackle group looked behind Derrick Brown and second-round rookie Lee Hunter (Texas Tech) once Tershawn Wharton landed on the reserve/PUP list recovering from neck surgery, with a target return around Week 5. Bobby Brown III, Cam Jackson (undrafted), and Aaron Hall (undrafted) round out a group that needs Brown and Hunter to stay healthy for the first month.
At receiver, the notable subtraction came down to a relationship call more than a numbers game. Carolina released David Moore, who had followed Canales to a third organization since their days together in Seattle. In his place, Carolina kept John Metchie III on the strength of his chemistry with Bryce Young, the two having overlapped at Alabama, and a stronger preseason. Canales and Morgan bet on continuity in the quarterback room over Moore’s résumé, and that bet fits a broader theme of this cutdown: specific fits won out over accumulated experience almost everywhere the staff had a choice to make.
Carolina’s receiver room also lost a piece back in July that shaped this whole cutdown. Third-round rookie Chris Brazzell II (Tennessee) tore ligaments in his knee and underwent season-ending surgery. That injury is a real reason Carolina carried just six wideouts into the season (Tetairoa McMillan, Jalen Coker, Xavier Legette, Jimmy Horn Jr., Brycen Tremayne, and Metchie) while stacking five tight ends instead. Darren Waller, Tommy Tremble, Mitchell Evans, Feleipe Franks, and Ja’Tavion Sanders all made the team even though Waller worked through just two practices all preseason.
Morgan treated the tight end room as a collection of specialists rather than a straight depth chart, saying Waller gives the offense “a different dimension.” Elsewhere on the roster, outside linebacker Thomas Incoom, linebacker Claudin Cherelus, and receiver Brycen Tremayne all earned their spots largely on special-teams value.
The clearest changing-of-the-guard move at any position came at quarterback, where Carolina released Kyle Trask and instead kept undrafted rookie Haynes King as Bryce Young’s primary backup insurance behind veteran Kenny Pickett. King, a four-year starter at Georgia Tech who went unselected in the 2026 draft, impressed enough in the Hall of Fame Game and the preseason reps that followed to leapfrog a player with actual NFL passing snaps on his résumé. Carolina risks little on the swing. King has shown enough to trust him in relief of Pickett, and if he never sees the field, the roster spot cost the team nothing.
King wasn’t the only undrafted player to make real inroads. Albert Reese IV earned an offensive tackle job on movement ability alone, and Cam Jackson and Aaron Hall both stuck as interior defensive linemen. Morgan singled out Hall and Reese as players who “earned it” through training camp competition rather than being handed a roster spot.
Worth separating from that group are the players occasionally mislabeled as UDFAs in preseason coverage: center Sam Hecht and safety Zakee Wheatley were both fifth-round picks in April’s draft, not undrafted free agents, joining first-rounder Monroe Freeling, second-rounder Lee Hunter, fourth-rounder Will Lee III, and seventh-rounder Jackson Kuwatch. Six of Carolina’s seven 2026 draft picks made the initial roster in some form. Brazzell’s injury is the only reason the seventh didn’t.
Carolina’s 17-man practice squad, finalized September 1, reveals plenty about the team’s priorities beyond the 53. Wide receiver Ja’seem Reed, among the cutdown-day waivers, went unclaimed and came right back after a camp in which Morgan said he “just catches everything.” Zavala’s return gives Carolina a fourth-year veteran who can be elevated in an emergency at guard or center.
Linebacker Tyrel Dodson and defensive lineman Anthony Goodlow bring prior scheme exposure to Evero’s staff, while Torricelli Simpkins, Zion Childress, Jake Curhan, Cam Gill, Corey Thornton, Isaia Glass, DeVonta Smith, Casey Washington, Tre Tyus, Parker Petersen, David Moore, and Isaiah Simmons round out a squad heavy on players who were on the 90-man roster days earlier. Mapalo Mwansa occupies the international pathway exemption spot, giving Carolina an 18th developmental player who doesn’t count against the standard 16.
Moore’s landing spot on the practice squad keeps a familiar face in the building after his release and gives Carolina a recall option if the receiver room takes a hit before Brazzell returns next year. Not every cut player waited by the phone for Carolina to call back, though: the Vikings claimed center Nick Samac off waivers before the Panthers had a chance to bring him to their own practice squad.
The Okereke move reads differently once you factor in what Carolina already spent on defense this year. In March, the Panthers signed edge rusher Jaelan Phillips to a four-year, $120 million deal and Devin Lloyd to a three-year, $45 million deal, a combined $165 million bet on two players who now anchor Evero’s front seven alongside holdovers Derrick Brown and Jaycee Horn. Wallace was never going to block that kind of investment, and once Lloyd locked down one inside linebacker spot, Wallace’s competition with Cherelus for the other job carried far less margin for error than it would have on a defense still waiting on its centerpiece additions.
Evero himself is working under real stakes in 2026, his fourth season as coordinator. Carolina’s defense finished 2025, his third year on the job, in the middle of the pack, 15th in points allowed, 15th in passing yards allowed, and 20th against the run, numbers that haven’t yet justified the head-coaching interviews Evero has drawn around the league.
With Phillips, Lloyd, and now Okereke added to a front that already includes Brown and Horn, the roster upgrade removes Evero’s easiest excuse. A top-10 finish this season likely accelerates his path to a head job elsewhere; another middling year, after this level of investment, puts his seat on this staff in question. Every linebacker and defensive tackle move from cutdown week connects back to that pressure: Carolina isn’t stockpiling depth for its own sake, it’s trying to give its defensive coordinator no reason to fall short again.
What It All Means Heading Into Week 1
Morgan and Canales bought immediate competence at two spots, linebacker and defensive tackle, while betting on internal development and specific fits everywhere else. The Okereke signing and the Edwards trade both carried real costs, whether that was the Wallace fallout or a future sixth-round pick, and Carolina made both moves because the existing roster wasn’t good enough at either spot in August. The offensive line needs Ekwonu and Moton back soon: Freeling, Walker, Bullock, and Hecht are a lot of unfamiliarity to throw at a Bears front in Week 1.
The receiver and quarterback decisions read as more confident, built on specific chemistry and camp performance rather than name recognition. Six of seven 2026 draft picks making the roster is a strong outcome for Morgan’s personnel department, regardless of the line’s injuries. Whether all of it adds up to a step forward from last year’s 8-9 finish starts getting answered September 13, when the Bears visit Bank of America Stadium, and Carolina finds out how much of this roster-building gamble was worth it.
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