Five takeaways from Wednesday, including backup plans, bad news for Brooks, and more

From a football standpoint, the groin injury suffered by Brooks Sunday was tough. It was also hard for the human beings who have watched him come back from two ACL tears already.

Canales said Brooks would have surgery, and the six-to-eight-week timeline was roughly the same with or without surgery. That left the Panthers with just Chuba Hubbard and AJ Dillon on the active roster, but Canales said they’d activate practice squad running back Anthony Tyus III (who goes by Tre) for the game against the Browns Sunday.

But mostly, the emotional pain for Brooks was as bad as the physical.

“Yeah, he was bummed,” Canales said, in a serious understatement. “This hit him hard, particularly when it happened after the game, and the guys could feel it too, and we were just trying to encourage him. This is a part of this process as your body figures out how you’re going to go forward in this new mode. This is a part of it, and just being able to share with him, there’s the different experiences that I’ve had and, and the different experiences he’s had, these opportunities.

“And my encouragement to him was, God’s plan. He knew what was going to happen before it happened, for us to just be able to say, ‘OK, this is just my next step. This is the new challenge that I have in front of me to attack,’ and he’ll attack it the right way.”

Quarterback Bryce Young has talked all summer about how excited he was to be getting Brooks back in the offense, but he has also marveled at Brooks’ resilience and the way he’s approached his comeback from the knee injuries.

“I feel for him; I’m definitely going to be praying for him,” Young said. “He works so hard, it’s tough. He’s a soldier. I know he’s going to bounce back, do the work, do everything, but, yeah, from the human side, I just, I feel for him,

“I mean, you have to compartmentalize. Obviously, I have a lot of things that I have to worry about. So you consume yourself with that. Obviously, being on the field, you have to go lead; throughout the week, you have to go and do your job. But yeah, I mean, of course there’s always that side that’s on your mind. And it’s just such a rough sport that we play. JB, everyone across the league, It’s part of the game unfortunately, so yeah, I mean my thoughts and prayers are with him, with anyone who’s going through anything; it’s the unfortunate part of the game.”