Teddy Bridgewater returned to the NFL after announcing his retirement at the end of the 2023 season, but he was back in uniform before the end of the 2024 season.
Bridgewater said on Monday that his second retirement is going to be a lasting one. Bridgewater stepped away from the Lions this weekend and they placed him on the reserve/retired list on Sunday.
“This time it’s official,” Bridgewater wrote in a post to his Instagram account.
Bridgewater went on to recall his comeback from a 2016 knee injury that he described as “gruesome” and created doubt about his ability to play football again. Bridgewater returned to the Vikings before the end of the 2017 season and played for most of the next decade, but he wrote “this wheel of mine can no longer deal with something as simple as standing around on a turf field.”
The Vikings selected Bridgewater in the first round in 2014 and he went on to play for the Saints, Panther, Broncos, Lions and Buccaneers. He returned to the Lions as a free agent this offseason, but the newly signed Josh Dobbs is now set to back up Jared Goff in Detroit.
Panthers Clips
Football returned on Thursday night, with a game between the Panthers and Cardinals in Canton, Ohio.
Viewers returned, too. Via Sports Media Watch, 6.99 million watched the game on NBC.
It was the biggest audience for the Hall of Fame game since the Cowboys and the Steelers played in 2021. That year, 7.33 million watched on Fox.
It was also the largest number for an NBC HOF game since 2017, when 8.3 million watched the Cowboys and the Cardinals.
The game used to do better when it was played on Sunday night, the day after the enshrinement ceremony. In 2016, a paint-drying snafu during the transition resulted in the Hall of Fame game between the Packers and Colts being canceled.
The Panthers have added some depth to their offensive line.
Carolina announced on Monday that the club has signed guard Joshua Gray.
Gray, 26, was previously with the team through the offseason program after signing a futures deal in January. He was waived on July 24.
He entered the league last year as an undrafted free agent with the Falcons, spending the season on the club’s practice squad.
As a corresponding move, the club waived tight end Chamon Metayer.
The Panthers opened their preseason slate in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In one of the most entertaining exhibition games in recent memory, Haynes King had a 5-yard touchdown run on the final play to beat the Cardinals 33-30.
Carolina’s starters did not play Thursday night. The Panthers will play their starters, including quarterback Bryce Young, on Saturday night in the Bills’ first game at the new Highmark Stadium.
“Yes, yes,” Canales said Sunday about the starters playing, via Anthony Rizzuti of USA Today. “We will play this week, for sure. We’ll take it week by week. We’ll get them out there, probably play something similar to what Kenny [Pickett] and that group played in the Hall of Fame Game. So it’ll be somewhere between 10 and 20 plays, depending on how those drives pan out, so we can just get some good work in.”
Quarterback Kyle Trask officially joined the Panthers on Sunday.
Word on Saturday was that the Panthers would sign Trask to fill out their quarterback room in the wake of Haynes King’s hamstring injury. The rookie was injured in the Hall of Fame Game and is expected to miss some time.
Trask was a second-round pick in Tampa in 2021 and he played in seven games as a backup. He failed to make the team last summer and spent time on the Falcons’ practice squad during the regular season.
The Panthers also announced that they have waived wide receiver Malick Meiga and linebacker Nick Hampton with injury designations.
Panthers quarterback Haynes King injured his hamstring in the Hall of Fame Game this week and they are set to add another quarterback to the roster for the coming practice week.
Mike Kaye of the Charlotte Observer reports that they will sign Kyle Trask. Trask recently worked out for the team.
Trask played for the Buccaneers when Panthers head coach Dave Canales was the offensive coordinator in Tampa. He spent four seasons with the Bucs before being released last year and spent some time on Atlanta’s practice squad later in the year.
Joe Person of TheAthletic.com reports that King is considered week-to-week as a result of the hamstring injury.
Luke Kuechly, at 35, became the second-youngest Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee ever on Saturday. Only Gale Sayers, who was enshrined in 1977 at 34, was younger.
Kuechly earned a bust in Canton in his second year of eligibility after playing only eight seasons.
His 14-minute speech remembered those who helped get him to Canton and the life lessons football taught him.
“This game teaches you a lot if you’re willing to observe and listen,” Kuechly said. “It’s taught me resilience, consistency, toughness, the value of communication, how to find common ground, and most importantly, how to enjoy it along the way, because often times the best moments are the ones you are in. Ron Rivera used to beat that into our head and say, ‘Be where your feet are.’ Well, he didn’t just mean be where your feet are when you’re at the Super Bowl, playing with and against incredible players. He meant, be where your feet are all the time, and that’s been great advice.
“The joy football gave me didn’t come from any particular win. It came from competing, from studying, from practicing and from preparing, and joy came from the people I was with. I think about the bus rides, the plane flights, being with each other at Wofford College during training camp. You’ve never seen guys so happy to have a night off and eat pizza with their buddies.
“The relationships formed through football are unique. You see each other at your best and at your worst. You spend long days together in meeting rooms. You learn how different people communicate, lead and overcome challenges. And over time, teammates become friends, and friends become family. That’s why, when people ask me what I miss most about football, it’s not one specific game or one specific play. It’s the locker room. It’s conversations that have nothing to do with sports. It’s celebrating together after wins, and hurting together after losses.
“There’s no way to measure what the game of football has given to me, the joy it’s provided, and, more than anything, the people that I have been so blessed to be around as a result of this game.”
Kuechly became the third Panthers legend in five years to be inducted into the Hall, joining Sam Mills and Julius Peppers.
Despite his short career, Kuechly made 1,092 tackles, more than 100 tackles in all eight seasons. He was the league’s Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2012, a Defensive Player of the Year in 2013 and part of the All-Decade Team of the 2010s.
“I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have been touched by the game of football,” Kuechly said in wrapping up his speech. “Football has given me so much more than I could have ever imagined. The people I’ve met, the experiences we’ve shared and the joy I’ve found through this game will stay with me for the rest of my life. Your love and support have meant more than you’ll ever know. So thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey. Thank you for sharing today with me. And Keep Pounding.”
NFL preseason games don’t matter in the standings, but they matter a lot to undrafted rookies trying to make the team. And few undrafted rookies have had as impressive a preseason debut as Panthers quarterback Haynes King in Thursday night’s Hall of Fame Game.
King completed 21 of 34 passes for 180 yards and two touchdowns, with no sacks and no turnovers, and he also ran for 39 yards, including the game-winning touchdown run as time expired. King spoke afterward about how much it meant to him to play like that in Canton, Ohio, in front of dozens of Hall of Famers in town for enshrinement weekend.
“It was a dream come true,” King said. “Growing up, you hear about all these first-ballot Hall of Famers, and to see some of them walking in front of you before the game is pretty amazing. And to be able to showcase your talent in front of them is a dream come true.”
The 25-year-old King spent six years in college football and was the ACC Player of the Year at Georgia Tech last season, but he went undrafted because he was regarded as more of a runner than a passer. He looked very comfortable throwing the ball on Thursday night.
“I’m very excited that I got this opportunity, and I feel like I went out there and operated at a high level,” King said. “I allowed everybody around me to play better as well.”
When King dove across the goal line on the final play of the game, the Panthers’ sideline went crazy, and head coach Dave Canales loved that.
“Haynes is a fantastic athlete and he just finds a way to win, and that’s what he did,” Canales said. “Really proud of the group and also proud of the whole team celebrating. That’s something we pride ourselves on, celebrating how hard we work on these situations and then watching it come alive.”
Haynes King wasn’t drafted despite being the ACC Player of the Year last season. The Panthers signed the former Georgia Tech star quarterback as a free agent, and he showed Thursday night maybe someone should have drafted him.
Third on the team’s depth chart, King replaced veteran Kenny Pickett with 9:38 remaining in the first half and the Panthers trailing 14-7.
King completed 21 of 34 passes for 180 yards and two touchdowns, a 15-yarder and a 5-yarder.
He also ran for 39 yards on three carries, including scoring on a 5-yard jaunt on the final play of the game. It gave the Panthers a 33-30 victory.
In one of the most entertaining Hall of Fame Games ever, the Cardinals gained 425 yards and the Panthers 378. Rookie Carson Beck started for Arizona and went 15-of-19 for 188 yards and a touchdown before turning it over to fourth-string quarterback Kedon Slovis, who was 9-of-10 for 106 yards and a touchdown.
Carson Beck has played in much bigger games than the Hall of Fame Game, so it probably should come as no surprise that the lights weren’t too bright or the stage too big.
Beck started for the Cardinals in the first preseason game of the NFL season.
He showed up and showed out.
Beck played a little more than a half, completing 15 of 19 passes for 188 yards and a touchdown. He hit Reggie Virgil for what would have been a big gain on his final throw of the night in the third quarter, but Isaiah Simmons knocked it out.
He directed scoring drives of 96, 50 and 61 yards, throwing a 5-yard fade to a well-covered Simi Fehoko for a touchdown on the team’s second scoring drive.
The Cardinals were tied with the Panthers 17-17 when Beck left with 10:15 remaining in the third quarter.
Fourth-stringer Kedon Slovis replaced Beck.
