The Panthers designated linebacker Claudin Cherelus for return from injured reserve on Wednesday.
Cherelus will be able to practice with the team for the next 21 days. He’ll need to be activated before the end of that period if he is going to play at any point before the end of the season.
The Panthers have now designated seven players for return from injured reserve this season. Teams are permitted to bring eight players back each year.
Cherelus was claimed off of waivers from the Jets after the cut to 53 players at the end of August. He played 105 special teams snaps in six games before hurting his knee.
The Panthers also announced that they have released quarterback Jake Luton from their practice squad.
A large pocket of Steelers fans has wanted coach Mike Tomlin to go, for more than a few years now. After the current year ends, they might get what they want.
And they still might want to be careful about what they’re wishing for.
For the first time since Tomlin became the coach of the team in early 2007, it feels like a divorce is coming. And it’s not that the Steelers would fire Tomlin. If a split occurs, it will happen either because Tomlin wants out — or because another team looking for a new head coach (Commanders, e.g.) calls the Steelers to initiate the process for essentially pulling off a trade.
What would the Steelers want for Tomlin? He’s under contract for one more year. Twenty-one years ago, Jon Gruden was under contract for one more year with the Raiders. And the Buccaneers gave up two first-round picks, two second-round picks, and $8 million to get Gruden. (On the defensive staff that Gruden inherited was a young defensive backs coach named Mike Tomlin.)
Surely, it wouldn’t take that much to get Tomlin. Especially if Tomlin is willing to do what few coaches ever dare to try. Tomlin could make it clear, internally or externally or both, that he’s content to finish his contract and become a coaching free agent in 2025.
His willingness to do that could make the Steelers more reasonable regarding whatever they’d want for a coach they possibly no longer desire.
Regardless of how it plays out, there’d more than enough smoke to make the teams that will be looking for a coach to at least make the call to Pittsburgh in order to see whether Tomlin would be available. As a practical matter, the owners of the teams that could be changing coaches are likely already working the back channels to find out: (1) whether Tomlin would want the job; and (2) whether the Steelers would part ways with him.
So where will it go? Much of it will depend on what happens over the next three weekends. Unless Tomlin has already decided that, no matter how the rest of the season goes, it’s time for a change.
Veteran pass rusher Justin Houston is available to join a new team for the final weeks of the 2023 season.
The Panthers announced that they waived Houston on Tuesday. The team’s announcement says that the move came at Houston’s request.
Houston has been out since early November because of a hamstring injury, but a team looking for some help off the edge could claim him with the hope that he’ll be able to help them get to the quarterback.
Houston had nine tackles, a half-sack, two tackles for loss and three quarterback hits while starting the first seven games of the year in Carolina. He is 26th in league history with 112 career sacks.
Quarterback Bryce Young earned his second career NFL victory on Sunday, as the Panthers defeated the Falcons 9-7 on a rainy afternoon in Charlotte.
After the contest, Young said it felt great to get a win.
“Really, we’re just all happy. There’s a lot of joy for sure,” Young said in his postgame press conference. “It really comes from us wanting to see each other succeed. We want to see each other win. We put the work in. We trust in each other, and we haven’t been able to see a lot of those results this year, but it’s always great when you get to see that and it actually gets to come to fruition on Sunday.
“Again, right now it’s still fresh. Still enjoying it, but there’s still a lot of stuff we want to get better at and want to improve on. So, feels great. We’ll move on and file it away and take the good and the bad from it.”
Young was 18-of-24 for 167 yards in Sunday’s tough playing conditions. He engineered a 17-play, 90-yard drive that took up the last 7:35 of the game and set up Eddy Pineiro’s game-winning 23-yard field goal.
“It’s something for us to build off of,” Young said. “Again, it hasn’t gone the best before this, but we need a win every week. There’s no week that we need one more than the other. And throughout all this, we never lose faith. Never lose confidence. Never lose trust in each other. There’s no loss of fight.
“They’re hard to come by, and they mean a lot. We’ve got to enjoy it and then file it away and take what we can from it and improve.”
The Falcons asked their quarterback to win them a game in rainy conditions on Sunday, but Desmond Ridder couldn’t get it done.
Ridder moved the Falcons into the red zone with a 7-6 lead halfway through the fourth quarter in Charlotte and the team called a pass play on second-and-10 from the Carolina 18-yard-line. Ridder rolled to his left and threw back toward the middle of the field, which proved to be a bad choice as the ball went directly to Panthers safety Xavier Woods. The Panthers wouldn’t give the ball up as they drove for a game-winning field goal as time expired.
“I was trying to get back inside,” Ridder said, via the team’s website. “Any time you’re throwing late over the middle, it’s probably not a good idea. I was trying to make a play, and I tried to do too much.”
It wasn’t the only negative play of the day for the Falcons. Running back Bijan Robinson lost a fumble and the offense only managed 204 yards against a one-win team, but the 16th turnover of the season for Ridder still stood out because it was the latest sign that the belief the Falcons placed on Ridder heading into this year was grounded in hope rather than performance.
A tight NFC South race is going to be decided on moments like Sunday’s interception and Ridder has failed to come through in enough of them that it is hard to believe the Falcons will be exiting the season with anything close to the certainty at quarterback they had this spring.
