The NFL season is just two weeks away from kicking off and the injuries during the preseason are starting to stack up. What coaches and owners are always most fearful of is their star player going down with some kind of injury just weeks before the season begins.
Unfortunately this nightmare became true for the Carolina Panthers. According to ESPN.com, Panthers’ starting quarterback Cam Newton, suffered a hairline fracture to a rib in Friday night’s loss to the New England Patriots.
Newton’s injury comes at a detrimental time for the Panthers. Newton has been recovering from offseason ankle surgery and desperately needed to continue to work on his timing with a new group of receivers.
Despite the injury, head coach Ron Rivera remains optimistic about Newton being ready for opening day:
“I do [expect him to be ready], but a lot of it is he had to get past the soreness, which we expect, and we’ll see how he starts to progress […] There is a lot of concern. We’ll treat it day by day and evaluate it at the end of the week and see how he is. We expect him to get past the soreness in the next few days and do a lot more.”
The Panthers tried to limit Newton’s running this preseason in hopes to avoid something like this happening, but could not stay away from it.
Newton will miss the preseason finale against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
