Football actually came back Thursday night, and it came back loud. The Panthers and Cardinals played the 2026 Hall of Fame Game in Canton, and it turned into the rare preseason opener that people will actually remember, capped by Haynes King scrambling in for a 5-yard, game-winning touchdown with no time left on the clock. Final: Carolina 33, Arizona 30.
King scrambles into the end zone on 3rd-and-goal as the clock hits 0:00, sealing the win as Panthers coaches erupt on the sideline.
The bigger story going in was supposed to be Carson Beck. The Cardinals took the Miami product with the first pick of the third round this spring after he threw Georgia and then Miami to a combined run of national relevance, and he showed exactly why in his NFL debut, going 15-of-19 for 188 yards and a touchdown. Barstool's crew was fawning over his arm from the jump, and it wasn't hard to see the appeal.
Beck drops a deep ball into stride for a diving completion down the sideline as Carolina and Arizona play to an early 7-7 tie.
But this is the preseason, where the backups always find a way to steal the show, and King made sure of it. Nobody drafted him. The Georgia Tech product, an ACC Player of the Year who ran for 37 touchdowns in college, went unsigned in April and had to settle for a $250,000 guaranteed UDFA deal from Carolina just to get a jersey. Thursday night he answered that with 21-of-34 passing for 180 yards and two touchdowns through the air, plus 39 rushing yards, orchestrating a 13-play drive that ended with him diving into the end zone as time expired.
Naturally, the internet made it about Beck's job security anyway — even though the two rookies play different positions on different teams and were never actually competing for the same roster spot. It was still enough for Barstool accounts to start jokingly picturing Jacoby Brissett, Arizona's veteran quarterback, sweating out every deep ball Beck uncorked from the sideline.
The gag caught on fast — PFT Commenter's timeline had "the torch has been passed from Carson Beck to Haynes King" within minutes of the final whistle, which is a stretch as anything but a joke given King plays for the team that just beat Beck's, not the one replacing him. Still, it's the kind of overreaction preseason breeds, and for one night it worked, because both quarterbacks genuinely balled.
None of it changes much on paper. Beck is Arizona's developmental piece behind an established quarterback room, and King is an undrafted long shot trying to survive summer cuts on a crowded Carolina depth chart. But Hall of Fame Game performances have a way of shaping camp battles and roster spots more than the box score suggests, and both of these guys just made their front offices' decisions a little harder. For one August night in Canton, that was more than enough.