The Carolina Panthers signed quarterback Kyle Trask on Sunday, adding a veteran arm to the room just three days after rookie Haynes King became an unlikely folk hero in the Hall of Fame Game. King is now considered week-to-week with a hamstring injury he suffered on the winning play of Thursday’s preseason opener, forcing Carolina to move fast to restock its depth chart behind starter Bryce Young.
Trask, a former second-round pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2021, spent parts of three seasons in Tampa before a brief stint on the Atlanta Falcons’ practice squad in 2025. He now steps into a Panthers quarterback room that already includes Young and veteran Kenny Pickett, giving Carolina three healthy passers again after King’s setback left it dangerously thin.
How King’s Big Moment Turned Into a Setback
King, an undrafted free agent out of Georgia Tech, delivered one of the more memorable Hall of Fame Game performances in recent memory on Thursday night in Canton. He completed 21 of 34 passes for 180 yards and two touchdowns, then sealed a 33-30 win over the Arizona Cardinals by scrambling in for the game-winning score as time expired. It was on that final dive to the goal line, according to head coach Dave Canales, that King strained his hamstring.
“It was on that last play — where he kind of lunged forward and dove for the goal line, and really gave everything he had, literally,” Canales told reporters Sunday. “We’ll just keep evaluating him on a weekly basis. I do not see him coming back for this game, for sure. We’ll reevaluate him on the following week to see when we can get him back out there.”
That ruled King out for Carolina’s next exhibition game, a Saturday matchup with the Buffalo Bills at Buffalo’s new Highmark Stadium, and left the Panthers with just two healthy quarterbacks on the roster. King is officially considered week-to-week rather than day-to-day, an indication the team is treating the strain with some caution given the stakes of the ongoing quarterback competition. Carolina still has two more preseason tune-ups on the calendar — against the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Houston Texans — before roster cuts arrive at the end of the month.
To fill the void, the Panthers moved quickly on Trask, who brings familiarity with parts of Carolina’s coaching staff from his time in Tampa Bay. In seven career regular-season appearances with the Buccaneers, Trask completed 4 of 11 passes for 28 yards, having spent most of his time behind Baker Mayfield on the depth chart rather than seeing the field. The move gives Carolina a stopgap third quarterback while King works his way back, with Canales indicating Pickett and Trask will handle the bulk of the non-starter reps against Buffalo.
What the Move Means for Panthers Betting Markets
Carolina enters the season as a team oddsmakers view with some skepticism despite winning the NFC South a year ago. Books had the Panthers’ win total sitting around 7.5 heading into August, with the over priced near +115 and the under near -136 at some shops, a modest step down after Carolina beat its previous win total by a wide margin in 2025. The Panthers are also priced as roughly the third choice in the NFC South at +310, well behind the market’s expected division favorites, and sit near +9000 on Super Bowl futures — long shots even by the standards of a division winner.
None of the futures markets are likely to move dramatically off a QB3 transaction on its own, since Bryce Young remains the unquestioned starter and Kenny Pickett is locked in as the primary backup. But King’s injury and Trask’s arrival matter at the margins for bettors tracking the quarterback competition itself. King had been building real momentum as an emerging name in that room before the injury, and any extended absence slows his path to establishing himself as a legitimate long-term option behind Young. For preseason prop bettors and depth-chart watchers, the practical impact is straightforward: expect Pickett to see extended run in the next exhibition game, with Trask likely handling mop-up duty once he’s up to speed, while King’s snap totals — and any market chatter tied to his rookie-of-camp type buzz — go quiet until the hamstring clears.
The bigger-picture betting angle is about roster certainty. A thin quarterback room is exactly the kind of situation that can move a number if the top of the depth chart is affected, and while Young’s health hasn’t been in question, the Panthers now have less proven margin for error behind him than they did a week ago. That’s worth watching as the preseason progresses and the sample size on both King’s recovery timeline and Trask’s snaps grows.
