Jack Plummer’s first season in the UFL ended with the league’s top individual honor.
The Orlando Storm quarterback has been named the UFL MVP.
The 26-year-old, who signed as an undrafted free agent with the Panthers in 2024, joined the Storm in 2026. He finished first in the league with 2,188 passing yards for the 8-2 Storm. His 17 touchdown passes were second in the league.
Plummer threw only one interception in 300 attempts.
No relation to former NFL quarterback Jake Plummer, Jack Plummer played college football at Purdue, California, and Louisville.
In 2024 with the Panthers, he spent most of the season on the practice squad. He was promoted to the active roster in late December. The Panthers waived him in August 2025.
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The Panthers and wide receiver Jalen Coker agreed to terms on a three-year, $35 million extension, Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports.
The deal includes $6 million in incentives.
Coker was an exclusive rights free agent this year and scheduled to be a restricted free agent next year.
Coker, 24, signed with the team as an undrafted free agent in 2024. He has played 22 games with seven starts in his two seasons.
He has made 65 receptions for 872 yards and five touchdowns.
Panthers coach Dave Canales, who wore a Band-Aid on his nose Tuesday, revealed he recently underwent a procedure to remove skin cancer.
Canales said he went for a routine skin cancer screening performed by the team, and a small spot on his nose tested positive for basal cell carcinoma.
“It’s a good reminder not to take these things for granted,” Canales said, via the Associated Press. “It was a basal cell type of skin cancer in a small spot, and they were able to get it off. So I’m really appreciative.”
Basal cell carcinoma is the most common form of skin cancer and is “highly curable, slow-growing, and rarely spreads to other parts of the body,” according to The Skin Cancer Foundation.
Canales, 45, said his mother also dealt with skin cancer when she was in her 40s. Because of that, Canales said he is diligent at applying sunscreen.
“You can imagine a Southern California kid playing outdoor sports and then getting into coaching, right?” Canales said.
The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it has expanded the list of allowed sunscreen ingredients to include bemotrizinol. Bemotrizinol is a chemical compound that has long been popular in Europe, Australia and some Asian countries.
The Panthers announced the addition of a wide receiver to their 90-man roster on Monday.
They have signed Malick Meiga ahead of their mandatory minicamp. Tight end Heinrich Haarberg was waived off of the roster in a corresponding move.
Meiga went undrafted after catching 19 passes for 209 yards and a touchdown at Coastal Carolina last season. The Panthers drafted Chris Brazzell in the third round and signed John Metchie to go with Tetairoa McMillan, Jalen Coker, Xavier Legette, and Jimmy Horn at receiver.
Haarberg signed with the Panthers as an undrafted free agent in May. He played quarterback at Nebraska before moving to tight end in 2024.
Newly arrived Panthers linebacker Devin Lloyd says he and his teammates have been talking about how excited they are about their potential for the 2026 season. And Lloyd also says talk at this time of year doesn’t mean much.
At Organized Team Activities on Tuesday, Lloyd said there’s palpable enthusiasm as the defense hits the practice field.
“Just the conversations with them, it’s just a lot of optimism and excitement,” Lloyd said, via Panthers.com. “I mean, we have so much talent on this defense and really the team, but specifically, for the defense, we’ve got so much talent. So yeah, it’s all been positive talk, but at the end of the day, talk is cheap; it’s about what we do at practice and how we continue to get better every day, and then ultimately what we do on game day. So today was a great start. I think we had a great practice, and it was a step in the right direction. We’ve got to just continue to build off today.”
Lloyd, who spent his entire four-year career with the Jaguars before signing with the Panthers this offseason, said he thinks he can do everything the Panthers’ defense asks of him.
“Anything you could ask a linebacker to do, I take pride in being able to do it at a high level,” Lloyd said. “In this game, they ask the linebackers — obviously we have a really, really stout D line — to make plays in the run game and then obviously in the pass game, that’s a big emphasis, for this defense. At the end of the day, football’s football. I wouldn’t even say scheme to scheme is anything different, but for me, it’s showing coach that, hey, I can do anything. I can blitz. I can cover whatever position you ask me to do. Put me in it, and I’ll make the play.”
Heading into his fourth NFL season, Panthers quarterback Bryce Young is leading the team like never before.
Panthers coach Dave Canales said Young is in charge of the offense not only from an Xs and Os perspective, but also in telling his teammates what they need to do, including getting on their case when some balls were hitting the ground during a rainy practice on Tuesday.
“Just total command of the system and knowing what he’s looking for, the timing of things, and the more that he owns it, the more he’s looking for specific things out of the tight ends, wideouts, and backs as the concepts come alive,” Canales said. “I just love it. I love the fact that he’s taking ownership, and the guys see that and rally around that, and something that they all appreciate.”
Young has steadily improved through his first three NFL seasons, and in Year 4, part of his continued growth will be firmly establishing himself as the player who makes the offense go.
The Panthers made the postseason for the first time since 2017 last season, winning the NFC South via a tiebreaker with an 8-9 record.
Importantly, it was also the first time the club had made the playoffs with quarterback Bryce Young.
Young, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 draft, put together his best season so far in 2025, completing 63.6 percent of his passes for 3,011 yards with 23 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He also rushed for 216 yards with a pair of TDs.
That’s enough for defensive tackle Derrick Brown — Carolina’s first-round pick back in 2020 — to call out the naysayers in an interview on Chris Long’s Green Light podcast.
“He’s our guy,” Brown said, via NFL.com. “We ride with [No.] 9 all the way through. That’s one of those things that people don’t want to admit how good he’s becoming because they’re going to have to go back and admit how wrong they were. As we all know, people don’t like doing that.”
While Young started 16 games in his first season, he was benched after two particularly poor games to start his second year — completing just 31-of-56 passes for 245 yards with three interceptions while taking six sacks. But when Andy Dalton was unable to play due to injury a few weeks later, Young came back in and didn’t give the starting role back up.
The way Young handled that situation left an impression on Young.
“He took the benching and, man, he just came into work every single day and killed it,” Brown said. “He didn’t care. He went right back to doing what he does. To him, it was about playing football.
“I’m going to be honest, I know everybody’s got an opinion about him, but I would never want to be a quarterback in the NFL. It might be the worst job to have. It’s the highest-paying, but it is the worst job to have in the NFL. I salute Bryce every single day, just dealing with all the outside noise and then still being able to come in there and be efficient in the work.”
The Panthers picked up Young’s fifth-year option, setting him up to make a guaranteed salary of $25.904 million in 2027. That’s a bargain as far as the going rate for a starting quarterback. But the team and Young will have to figure out a rate that works for both if he’s going to be on the team for 2028 and beyond. Much of that may depend on how Young and the team perform in 2026.
The Panthers have their entire 2026 coaching staff in place.
The team previously announced the additions of associate head coach/offensive specialist Darrell Bevell and senior offensive consultant Carl Smith to the staff. Wednesday’s announcement included word that they have hired special teams and defensive assistant Dwayne Stukes to Dave Canales’s staff.
Other new announcements include an assistant defensive coordinator title for linebackers coach Pete Hansen and new titles for offensive passing game coordinator Mike Bercovici.
Bercovici will work with offensive coordinator Brad Idzik, offensive assistant Keyshawn Colmon, offensive line coach Joe Gilbert, assistant head coach/run game coordinator Harold Goodwin, quarterbacks coach Will Harriger, tight ends coach Pat McPherson, wide receivers coach Rob Moore, running backs coach Bernie Parmalee, and offensive assistant Drew Petzing.
Defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero will oversee a group that includes Hansen, outside linebackers coach/run game specialist AC Carter, assistant linebackers coach Mayur Chaudhari, defensive pass game coordinator Jonathan Cooley, defensive assistant Ilir Emini, secondary coach Renaldo Hill, defensive assistant Kevin Peterson, and defensive line coach Todd Wash.
Special teams coordinator Tracy Smith, special teams assistant Daren Bates, head coaching assistant/coaching operations manager Jessica Beckenstein, director of coaching development Scott Cooper, and game management coordinator George Li round out this year’s staff.
The Panthers have added a versatile tight end to their 90-man roster.
The team announced the signing of Heinrich Haarberg on Wednesday morning. They waived outside linebacker Jamil Muhammad in a corresponding move.
Haarberg caught eight passes for 52 yards and a touchdown at Nebraska last season. It was the first season that he was listed as a tight end with the Cornhuskers after spending his first years at the school as a quarterback who sometimes saw time at other spots on the field.
Haarberg started eight games at quarterback in 2023 and one game in 2024. He was deployed in a similar fashion to the way Taysom Hill was utilized by the Saints during the 2024 season and he’ll hope his experience playing multiple spots will help his bid to stick around in Carolina.
The Panthers made a handful of roster moves on Monday.
They announced the signing of defensive tackle Tywone Malone and running back Miles Davis to their 90-man roster. They waived tight end Bryce Pierre and running back Montrell Johnson with injury designations to create room for the new players.
Malone played two seasons at Ole Miss and three at Ohio State before going undrafted this year. He had 26 tackles for the Buckeyes last season and 52 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss and two sacks over his entire college run.
Davis played in 27 games for BYU before transferring to Utah State in 2025. He had 932 yards from scrimmage and 11 touchdowns last year.
