By Harry P McGill ยท August 7, 2026
Preseason football comes with warning labels. The starters are usually watching. The defensive schemes are intentionally plain. Half the men making plays will be looking for work by Labor Day. Anyone making sweeping conclusions from one August football game probably also buys extended warranties on toaster ovens.
With all of that properly acknowledged, Haynes King gave the Carolina Panthers something Thursday night that cannot be dismissed quite so easily. The undrafted rookie quarterback walked into the Hall of Fame Game, produced touchdowns with his arm and legs, and ultimately delivered a 33 to 30 victory over Arizona by scrambling five yards for the winning touchdown on the final play.
That does not make him Carolina's quarterback of the future. It does make him one of the most interesting players on the roster this morning.
The appeal of King's performance was not simply the box score. He entered after Kenny Pickett started and immediately gave the Carolina offense a different personality. King connected with Ja'seem Reed for a 15 yard touchdown in the second quarter and consistently threatened Arizona with his legs when plays broke down.
Then came the final possession. Carolina needed a touchdown, and King drove the Panthers into position to win before taking matters into his own hands on the final snap. With the game tied at 27 late before Arizona had regained the lead, King ultimately answered and finished the night by running across the goal line as time expired.
That is preseason football, certainly. It is also precisely the sort of situation coaches want to see a young quarterback handle. The playbook matters. Mechanics matter. What happens when everybody in the stadium knows you have to make a play matters too.
King arrived in Carolina undrafted after a long college career that began at Texas A&M and finished at Georgia Tech. His final season with the Yellow Jackets was his best, earning ACC Player of the Year and ACC Offensive Player of the Year honors.
The athleticism has never been the mystery. King can move, extend plays and punish defenses that lose contain. The questions that pushed him out of the draft were more traditional quarterback questions involving consistency, mechanics and whether his game would translate when NFL defenses forced him to win from the pocket.
Thursday did not answer all of those questions. It did provide a rather compelling reason to keep asking them.
Let's settle one thing before somebody starts printing Haynes King QB1 shirts. Bryce Young is not suddenly involved in a quarterback competition because an undrafted rookie played well in Canton.
Kenny Pickett is a different matter.
Pickett entered camp as the obvious veteran backup. Will Grier's retirement simplified the room even further, leaving King as the developmental quarterback trying to earn a place somewhere in the organization. After Thursday night, simply sneaking King onto the practice squad becomes a less comfortable proposition.
If King continues playing this way through the remaining preseason games, Carolina may have to consider keeping three quarterbacks. At minimum, Dave Canales should give him increasingly meaningful repetitions and find out exactly what he has.
I liked the athleticism. I liked the touchdown pass. I liked watching a young quarterback refuse to panic when the game came down to one possession.
But what I liked most was that King looked as though he belonged there.
That is difficult to measure, and I'm usually suspicious of anyone trying. Still, quarterbacks reveal themselves when plays stop looking like they did on the whiteboard. King improvised without turning every broken play into a circus.
There was some roughness. His throwing mechanics will give quarterback coaches plenty to work on, and he was facing preseason personnel rather than an NFL starting defense. Nobody should confuse an encouraging debut with a finished evaluation.
But development is the entire point.
The Panthers may have stumbled into an interesting problem.
King cost them no draft capital. He arrived as an undrafted free agent with enough athletic ability to intrigue the coaching staff and enough flaws to explain why 32 teams passed on him repeatedly. One preseason game later, letting him disappear onto the practice squad no longer feels quite so automatic.
The proper response is not to promote him over Kenny Pickett this morning. It is to give him more football.
More snaps. More difficult situations. Better competition. Let NFL defenses begin collecting film and see how King responds once opponents know what he wants to do.
Most August heroes eventually become answers to trivia questions.
Every once in a while, though, one of them keeps playing.
Haynes King just earned the opportunity to find out which kind he is.