Carolina Panthers head coach Dave Canales noted that the wide receiver position will be tough to cut as roster deadline looms.
The 2026 NFL preseason is in the books. While the Carolina Panthers ended their preseason on Friday night, there were two more games to go. Now, the attention shifts to Week 1, which is two weeks away.
Before that can happen, NFL teams need to cut their roster down to 53 players ahead of Sunday's 6 p.m. deadline. That means there will be a lot of roster moves between now and the end of the day on Sunday.
For Carolina, they will have some interesting decisions to make. They had an extra few days and the fourth preseason game to evaluate talent. Dave Canales and his staff have evaluated the roster and now we are going to see just what they decided.
One battle that a lot of people have paid attention to is at wide receiver. After Tetairoa McMillan, Jalen Coker, and Xavier Legette, there is a battle for the final two and maybe three spots.
After Friday's preseason finale, Canales talked about that battle and who has stood out there.
"Extremely difficult, exactly what we want," Canales replied. "We wanna have those conversations. We're talking about John Metchie, we're talking about Jimmy Horn, Ja'seem Reed—all those guys who've had a really amazing camp.
"David Moore has just been consistent throughout the whole time. He was able to play some special teams today to kinda show what he can do in that regard. We hadn't given him a lot of [opportunities], but wanted him to get out there because we just wanna see. We think of him in that realm like Brycen Tremayne—an impact player on special teams who we also trust offensively. And we wanted to get him out there and give him more opportunities.
"It's great room, love the competition, love the way the guys are making the decisions really hard on us."
The battle is going to be tight and you wonder if certain guys did enough to earn their spot on the roster. Someone like Jimmy Horn and Ja'seem Reed stood out more often than not in terms of games and practice.
Veteran David Moore is someone that can provide some experience as well.
This is a big decision not only for the room but also for Bryce Young who could use some playmakers at the position.
