Pat Jones leaned on Carolina Panthers through ‘dark’ days. They now need each other

Consider the last two days for Pat Jones.

Consider early Thursday morning, when the veteran Carolina Panthers pass rusher first stepped onto the field for training camp. It was a new dawn — a new chapter beginning just months after suffering a season-ending back injury and dealing with the accompanying struggles of isolation, doubt, crises of identity. Jones took a knee, he said, overcome with emotion, and prayed.

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Consider Thursday late morning, toward the end of practice. One of his teammates — a shining soul through Jones’ “dark days” — went down. Nic Scourton. It looked bad immediately. Jones took another knee as Scourton writhed in pain.

And then, finally, consider Friday morning, after two emotional practices. Jones, the 27-year-old linebacker entering his sixth NFL season, was asked about his journey back — and was welling up with emotion again.

“It was definitely a long journey, longer than I would’ve thought,” Jones told reporters Friday, after Day 2 of training camp. “I’m so glad to be out here. It’s given me a whole new perspective of how I just look at the game. I just appreciate it a lot more.”

He added: “It was probably the biggest blessing that ever happened to me.”

And as he recalled his journey back, something came into focus:

For months, he was leaning on the Panthers.

Now, just two days in, the Panthers are leaning on him.

Jones officially finished 2025 starting the four games he played, adding one pass deflection and one sack. He was poised, he said, for what he thought was building up to a big year. Head coach Dave Canales loved his intensity defending the run on first and second down, and he was not to be overlooked on passing downs on the outside, either.

But just as his momentum sped up, he said, he felt something in his back. He played through it Week 4. Wrong decision. What ended up happening was he played through a herniated disc, and then part of the disc broke off, and surgery and rest were required, he said Friday.

Then came the emergence of then-rookie Scourton, who ended up tied as the sack leader on the team with five and who was commanding double-team attention and who was always being in the right places on the field and saying the right things off it. Jones, in fact, started finding purpose in working with Scourton and finding the best in him.

He started finding purpose in being around all his teammates. Jones said, “I just started looking forward to waking up in the morning and getting around my team. All of them. … It just lifted up my spirits.”

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Jones now considers it his duty to himself and his team to lift up Scourton in the way he plays. And he feels equipped to do it, he said.

“I feel like I’m the strongest I’ve ever been right now,” Jones said, adding that he lost a lot of body fat but is still competing at the same weight he was last year — 6-foot-4, 265 pounds.

“I’m hoping to show more (this year),” Jones said. “Really just come out healthy and show everybody what I can really do. I was in Minnesota for a long time, played with a lot of great players, and so it felt like last year was really my chance to show everybody. And I felt like once I started to heat up, it happened. … So it was hard. It was hard, for real.”

Canales thinks Jones is ready for the responsibility, too.

“Pat has inside and outside rush ability on third down and known pass situations,” Canales said. “That’s something he’s done in his career. So Pat will be out there. It’s just a question of how we mix in the rest of the group.”

Here’s what else we learned from Panthers practice Friday:

Starting guard Robert Hunt was at practice Friday but not in uniform. Starting cornerback Mike Jackson did not practice, either. Canales told reporters that they both had tightness in their backs and will get imaging later Friday.

“These types of things pop up early in camp,” Canales said. “We’re used to this. And league-wide this a common thing. So we gotta make sure he’s healthy before we get (Hunt) back out there. Same thing with Mike Jack.”

Here are five memorable plays from practice Friday. It was a day for the defense, mostly — but the offense had some moments to shine.

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Here are some other takeaways from practice: