Jonathon Brooks
A twice-ACL-repaired second-round back finally healthy enough to play, but he is the complement to Chuba Hubbard rather than the lead, and every knee-adjacent absence resets the whole conversation.
Role
Carolina has Hubbard installed as the primary back — first-team reps, early-down and goal-line work — with Brooks slotted as the clear No. 2 in a rotation, and Trevor Etienne behind them. With Rico Dowdle gone in free agency there is a genuine vacated share available (Dowdle handled a huge chunk of Carolina's carries once he took over in 2025), so the No. 2 job here is a real touch-generating role, not a decoy. Brooks was drafted as a three-down profile with legitimate receiving chops, so passing-down work is the most plausible route to standalone value, but he has almost no NFL sample: nine career carries for 22 yards across three games, plus 17 preseason snaps this summer. Expect a rotational share that grows or shrinks week to week depending on how the knee holds up and how Hubbard's own soft-tissue issues track.
He was a top-of-the-class RB prospect before the injuries, he is only 22, he has been cleared by his surgeon, he practiced through all of training camp and played in two preseason games, and Dave Canales has publicly said Brooks is meant to be a big part of the offense. Canales' backfields have repeatedly outperformed expectations (Dowdle and Hubbard both massively beat their preseason ranking), and Hubbard's own durability record is spotty — a calf issue wrecked his 2025 and a hamstring cost him most of this preseason. If Hubbard misses time, Brooks inherits a run-first offense's lead job.
Two ACL tears on the same right knee in roughly a calendar year, the second one on his ninth career carry, plus a college ACL before that. He has played three NFL games in two years. He is already missing practices with soreness before the season has started, and the team will not say where the soreness is — which, given the history, is the least reassuring possible answer. Even fully healthy he is behind an entrenched starter in a Bryce Young offense that has not been a fantasy engine, and a rotational No. 2 with a fragile knee is a weekly guessing game.
Where analysts split
The concrete split is whether the current soreness is ordinary post-camp maintenance on a rebuilt knee or an early sign the knee cannot handle a full workload — and, downstream of that, whether Brooks ever takes passing-down and two-minute work from Hubbard or stays a straight early-down rotational back. Optimists point to Canales saying he is 'very optimistic' for Week 1 and to a full camp completed; sceptics note the team is withholding the location of the soreness on a knee that has been operated on twice.
Research confidence: reported. Outlooks are grounded in web search over current reporting and refreshed through the season.
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