Carolina held its annual Fan Fest this evening, where the team likes to show off to fans some light drills and a little scrimmage highlighted by some deep passes to get the crowd excited. Tonight’s excitement, however, was blanketed by a nervous anxiety about mounting injuries. It’s not just the length of the list, which is getting longer by the day, it’s the big names like Cam Newton and Matt Kalil that top the list.

Cam Newton has been held out of throwing drills all week after throwing for four straight days the opening week of training camp. He was held out of passing drills tonight as well. Matt Kalil walked onto the field in pads with the intent of practicing, and before you know, he no longer had the pads on and was working with the injured players.

Curtis Samuels is still plagued by a hamstring. Corn Elder is suffering from a patella stress fracture, and now Fred Ross and Zach Sanchez have been hit by the injury bug.

Kelvin Benjamin was held out of team drills after doing some light work in individual drills.

We’ve known about these players and these concerns, although Ron Rivera has tried to downplay them as difficulty with the heat and humidity or wobbly legs. The hits didn’t stop coming tonight, however.

All of this has us asking:

Well thank God for Christian McCaffrey or else we'd all be curled up in the fetal position right now.

By Tony Dunn
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