A year after he ended his retirement to play for the Dolphins, veteran tight end Darren Waller is heading to Carolina.
Via Adam Schefter of ESPN, Waller has agreed to terms on a one-year deal.
A sixth-round pick of the Ravens in 2015, Waller became a Pro Bowler with the Raiders in 2020.
Traded to the Giants in 2023, he retired after his first season in New York. He joined the Dolphins last year.
Waller, 33, has a pair of 1,100-yard seasons, both with the Raiders. In 2025, he caught 24 passes for 283 yards and six touchdowns in nine games with the Dolphins.
The Panthers currently have five tight ends on the roster: Tommy Tremble, Ja’Tavion Sanders, Caden Prieskorn, James Mitchell, and Feleipe Franks.
Panthers associate head coach and offensive specialist Darrell Bevell worked with Waller last year in Miami, where Bevell served as the quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator.
Panthers Clips
Panthers running back Jonathon Brooks is slated to play in his first NFL preseason game this weekend and the team plans to have him see early action against the Bills.
Brooks missed the last two preseasons while recovering from torn ACLs, but has been practicing without issue this summer and head coach Dave Canales said on Wednesday that the plan is for him to rotate with Chuba Hubbard while the starting offense is in the game this weekend.
“He’s in great shape. He’s ready to rock, he’s ready to play football,” Canales said, via the team’s website. “And so now that’s just the next part of it. And you know, he’ll play with the first group, he’ll mix in and out with Chuba, and we’ll be able to get a good look at those guys with a couple of drives.”
Brooks last saw game action in Week 14 of the 2024 season, so any playing time on Saturday would be significant. The fact that it will come with the first team sets the stage for Brooks to make a real impact in Carolina this fall.
The Panthers got a starting offensive lineman back on the practice field Wednesday.
Per multiple reports from the team’s training camp, left guard Damien Lewis is on the field for the first time in a couple of weeks. Lewis has been dealing with a calf injury this summer.
Lewis’s calf injury came after the Panthers opened camp without both of their starting offensive tackles. Left tackle Ikem Ekwonu is recovering from a torn patellar tendon and right tackle Taylor Moton had a blood clot in his lung.
Both tackles are expected to be out into the regular season, so it’s all the more important for the Panthers that they have an intact interior offensive line for Week 1.
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.
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.”
