Matt Corral Leaves New England in Walking Boot
For the second straight week, the day ended in disappointment for Panthers rookie QB Matt Corral. Last week, it was more performance-based than anything, where he completed just one of nine pass attempts for eleven yards. Friday night in New England, he had a much stronger outing (9/15, 59 yards) but his night was cut short due to a foot injury.
P.J. Walker came back into the game to finish the final two drives. Corral was seen leaving Gillette Stadium with a walking boot on his left foot, indicating that this could be a serious injury. As of early Saturday morning, there is no update on the results of the X-rays that he had done.
Prior to the injury, head coach Matt Rhule was encouraged by some of what he saw from the young quarterback.
"I thought he looked sharp early. I thought he completed balls. I thought at the end a lot of the situations normally we’d probably with four minutes left and timeouts, we’d probably run a draw or screen or something and punt the ball and try to play defense.
"Those were invaluable reps for Matt to be down there. There will come a time he'll have to lead a drive coming out of someone else's end zone with the crowd being like that and getting those guys in the huddle and making sure they have the snap count and making sure we're not false starting. Even as he came off the field I got after him a little bit about it. In a good way. These are teaching moments, right? What we don't want to do is come out in these games and make it easy for the guys because, ‘hey, he's a two, he's a three.’ We want to give them opportunities to show that, ‘hey, I can play for you,’ so preparing them for their opportunity. I thought Matt did a lot of good things and there is a lot to learn from on the tape."
The Panthers will finish up preseason play next Friday at Bank of America Stadium against the Buffalo Bills.
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