Darnold & Mayfield to Continue Splitting First-Team Reps

Rolling into week two of the preseason, the Carolina Panthers are still "searching" for a starting quarterback. At this point, it has become very clear that Baker Mayfield is in the lead for the job and will ultimately win the battle, but the staff wants to be 100% certain before naming a QB1. 

By the end of this week, it may not be a secret anymore. Head coach Matt Rhule said a couple of weeks back that Patriots week would likely determine a lot of things. With two joint practices and a preseason game, the staff will find out a lot about who they are and what they've got in each room, particularly with the quarterbacks.

Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield have split the first team reps throughout all of training camp and that will continue, in some way this week.

"Not ready to talk about the game yet," Rhule said about the division of labor between the quarterbacks. "To me, the joint practices, are in some way better than the game because you get so many different situations. They'll get a bunch of things thrown at them this week and they'll have to adapt and adjust and react to different defenses. We'll see a 3-4 base as opposed to our 4-3, so it's unbelievably invaluable for our guys.

"We know both guys are going to get reps. How are we going to do it? Whether it's by period or by day, we're going to decide that today in meetings this afternoon. I just want to make sure both guys get two-minute with the ones, so we'll probably break it up by period but we haven't really gotten into all of specifics of that yet."

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