Carolina Panthers rookie wide receiver Chris Brazzell II is going to miss the start of his NFL career. The team confirmed Wednesday that he suffered a moderate LCL tear in his left knee during 7-on-7 drills and is expected to be sidelined for up to eight weeks.
That timeline puts Brazzell on track to miss the Panthers’ September 13 opener against the Chicago Bears and likely the entire first month of the season. The 22-year-old was carted off the practice field and will seek a second opinion before finalizing a treatment plan.
This one hurts on multiple levels. Brazzell was a third-round pick out of Tennessee this spring who came into camp with real momentum. He was competing for the Panthers’ WR3 role behind Xavier Legette and Adam Thielen, and reports out of the first week of camp suggested he was pushing hard for early snaps.
The injury itself is a no-contact one, which is somehow worse. Non-contact knee injuries in 7-on-7 drills are exactly the kind of thing every training camp report keeps its fingers crossed against. Brazzell had actually been sidelined from practice Sunday and Tuesday with soreness in the same left knee, but the team said the earlier soreness and the LCL tear are unrelated.
Read that however you want. A rookie skipping practice on Sunday, skipping practice on Tuesday, and then tearing his LCL in a light drill on Wednesday is a rough three-day stretch no matter how the medical staff frames the connection.
The Panthers’ offense is not built to survive receiver injuries. Bryce Young needs weapons around him to look competent. Legette showed real growth in his second year but he cannot be the entire show. Thielen is 36 and, at this point, a possession specialist rather than a full-time contributor. The team was counting on Brazzell to add a downfield element that this receiver room has been missing.
Fantasy managers already know what this means. Brazzell drops out of any real consideration in redraft leagues, and Thielen probably jumps up a round because he inherits some of those first-quarter targets. That is not a fun way to gain fantasy value, but it is where things stand.
The player who probably benefits most is second-year receiver Jalen Coker, who was already turning heads at camp before Brazzell went down. Coker now has a real path to being on the field on early downs in Week 1. Someone else is going to have to seize the deep receiver role from the outside as well.
The eight-week window means Brazzell should be back sometime in November if everything goes well. That is not a lost season. It is just a delayed start to what was supposed to be a real rookie debut. The Panthers, and Brazzell, will get through it. But this September just got harder.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
