{"id":365485,"date":"2025-09-13T19:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/365485\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T19:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:19:10","slug":"report-panthers-expected-to-have-key-offensive-starter-back-in-week-2-vs-cardinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/365485\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Panthers expected to have key offensive starter back in Week 2 vs. Cardinals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carolina Panthers<\/a> starting left tackle Ikem Ekwonu is seemingly on track to make his 2025 regular-season debut on Sunday.<\/p>\n

According to ESPN senior NFL reporter Jeremy Fowler, Ekwonu is expected to play<\/a> in tomorrow’s matchup against the Arizona Cardinals<\/a>. The fourth-year offensive lineman missed Carolina’s Week 1 loss<\/a> to the Jacksonville Jaguars<\/a> after undergoing an emergency appendectomy<\/a> two weeks prior.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Ekwonu had been listed as a limited participant in the team’s practices throughout the week. He was designated as questionable<\/a> for the contest on Friday.<\/p>\n

Head coach Dave Canales told reporters that he felt great about Ekwonu’s work in practice going into the weekend.<\/p>\n

“We just ramped him up every day and got him a few more reps each time,” he said yesterday. “He finished off a great practice today\u2014but again, we have to just kinda still take this thing a day at a time to see how he wakes up tomorrow after accumulating a couple of days of work.”<\/p>\n

Yosh Nijman received the starting nod in place of Ekwonu in last Sunday’s 26-10 defeat. Nijman, per Pro Football Focus, was responsible for six of the Panthers’ 11 allowed pressures on the afternoon.<\/p>\n

Follow\u00a0@ThePanthersWire<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter\/X for more Panthers content.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Panthers Wire: Panthers LT Ikem Ekwonu expected to play in Week 2, per report<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carolina Panthers starting left tackle Ikem Ekwonu is seemingly on track to make his 2025 regular-season debut on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[375,390,2604,1327,260,3838,7,7783,125,6388,6,453,22659],"class_list":{"0":"post-365485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-cardinals","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-arizona-cardinals","10":"tag-arizonacardinals","11":"tag-cardinals","12":"tag-carolina-panthers","13":"tag-dave-canales","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-ikem-ekwonu","16":"tag-jacksonville-jaguars","17":"tag-jeremy-fowler","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-offensive-lineman","20":"tag-yosh-nijman"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}