Live updates: Tracking every Carolina Panthers roster move before cut deadline
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
It was a pretty quiet day for the Carolina Panthers on Saturday in terms of reducing their training camp roster to 53 players.
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That’ll be different Sunday.
The Panthers sit at 84 players on their active roster as Sunday begins. And for all intents and purposes, you can consider them with 85 players; veteran inside linebacker Bobby Okereke agreed to terms with the team Saturday, according to media reports.
So there’s a long way to go before the cut-down deadline at 6 p.m. Sunday. We’ll be tracking every bit of it here in this live blog.
To get an in-depth view of what the Panthers did earlier in the weekend, check our Saturday live blog here.
The easiest way to describe what the Panthers did Saturday could be described in three short sentences. They waived seven players. They released one. And they agreed to terms with another.
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But let’s go a bit deeper.
The Panthers opted to waive these seven players:
*Hayes was waived with an injury designation after getting hurt in the Houston Texans’ joint practice Wednesday. That means that if Hayes clears waivers, he will revert to the Panthers’ injured reserve, and then the team will need to negotiate an injury settlement with him before he can become a free agent.
The Panthers also opted to release wide receiver Dan Chisena with an injury settlement. The veteran wideout and special teams player was on the Panthers’ injured reserve prior to getting released, meaning that he was already not counting against the team’s 91-man training camp roster.
And finally — and perhaps most importantly — the team reportedly agreed to terms with inside linebacker Bobby Okereke. The 30-year-old, 6-foot-2, 235-pound defensive leader will bring some veteran wisdom to a room that, besides free-agent acquisition Devin Lloyd, was in search of some. Okereke, a former third-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, is coming off a season in which he played all 17 games and notched 143 tackles and two interceptions … which prompts the question: Has he been flung into the starting LB2 competition with Trevin Wallace and Claudin Cherelus? Or is the starting job, suddenly, Okereke’s to lose?
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This story was originally published August 30, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
