The Carolina Panthers are expected to add another name to a ballooning positional group.
Rashaad Penny, a former first-round draft pick and veteran running back who’s previously played under Dave Canales, is expected to sign with the Panthers after rookie minicamp, a league source confirmed to The Charlotte Observer on Monday. Penny played last season with the Philadelphia Eagles in a limited role — playing only three games and notching 11 carries — and spent the previous five seasons with the Seattle Seahawks. The Panthers announced later Monday afternoon that Penny agreed to terms on a deal. Rookie minicamp, the first organized team activities that includes the Panthers’ draft picks and undrafted free agents, begins Friday.
Penny’s best season in Seattle came in 2021, when Canales was passing game coordinator and current Panthers offensive coordinator Brad Idzik was an offensive assistant, as well. The 28-year-old Penny took 119 carries for 749 yards and six touchdowns in 10 games played that year. Since then, though, he’s only played in eight games — five of which came in 2022 with Seattle, before a broken fibula in Week 5 sullied his stint there. Penny is expected to join a room that’s already a bit crowded. The running back room as it’s set up now includes three players in whom the Panthers invested heavily last year, and one the Panthers drafted a few weeks ago. Those players: ▪ Chuba Hubbard. The Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, native earned the starting running back spot early on last year and is expected to be the starter again in 2024. Last year’s breakout came by virtue of the fact that Hubbard was healthy for the first time in his career — after undergoing double abductor surgery and meniscus surgery not many knew about early on in his NFL life. As a result he put up career numbers: 238 carries for 902 yards and five touchdowns on the ground, adding 233 yards receiving. The former fourth-round draft pick out of Oklahoma State is entering his final year under contract with the Panthers.
▪ Miles Sanders. The 1,000-yard running back from 2022 in Philadelphia didn’t have a great 2023. After starting the first few games, Hubbard took his spot as primary ball-carrier by Week 4, and Sanders finished the season with 432 yards on 129 carries and one touchdown. The former Penn State star signed a four-year, $25 million deal before 2022 — one of the most lucrative deals on the sparse running back market — meaning a trade out of Carolina seems unlikely. Adding to that unlikelihood? General manager Dan Morgan, when asked about it post-draft, told reporters that “we love Miles” and that “we see a big role for him” and that “he can do a lot for our offense.” ▪ Jonathon Brooks. The Panthers took Brooks in the second round of this year’s draft and feel confident that they have the best running back in the class. Brooks, fresh out of Texas, had a remarkable season cut a few games short after tearing his ACL. It was a clean tear, Brooks said, which leads to a less complicated recovery, and he said after the draft he expects to be fully healthy by training camp. The hefty investment in Brooks — particularly when the Panthers had so many other offensive holes to fill — drew questions about the room’s size immediately, to which Canales replied that Brooks is versatile and that the Panthers will be stubborn about running the ball and plan to use several backs during the season. ▪ Raheem Blackshear. Let’s not forget Blackshear, who was not only a reliable back in 2023 on an offense that lacked explosiveness but was also one of the best kick returners in the league. Blackshear was second in average yards on kick returns among all returners who had 11 returns or more in 2023 at 26.9 yards; Velus Jones Jr. of the Bears sat right ahead of him at 27.2 yards per return. And with a new kickoff rule adding to the importance of the position and the phase of the game, it’s logical to think Blackshear’s value went up this offseason. (Penny also returned kicks in 2018 and 2019, his first two years in the league.)
Canales said he was “fired up” about running backs Carolina already had last month — a group that included the aforementioned four, as well as Tarik Cohen, Spencer Brown and Mike Boone. A few weeks after the draft, it appears Canales is still looking for more.
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