The Carolina Panthers are on the road again this week, visiting the Minnesota Vikings for their Week 12 game. That will bring on a reunion. Panthers quarterback Teddy Bridgewater was picked by Minnesota in the first round of the 2014 NFL draft. He was their starter for two seasons before the infamous knee injury that threatened his entire leg and career. In fact, playing for the Vikings under coach Mike Zimmer was his last starting job in the league before this year’s arrival in Carolina.
Zimmer told reporters today that Bridgewater deserves everything he gets and talked about his respect for No. 5, per David Newton at ESPN.
“I’m happy for Teddy. No. 1 he deserves everything he gets. I talked to him before the season and told him I’m going to wish you luck in 15 games. We have a lot of respect for each other.’’
Zimmer also said moving on from Bridgewater after the injury was “really hard.”
“That point in time, the odds of guys having a long career and playing with the things he had was not very good. . . . I always thought he would be the quarterback for my whole career.”
Watching a potential revenge game for Bridgewater is undeniably enticing. However, there’s no guarantee he will play this week. Bridgewater was a last-minute scratch for Sunday’s 20-0 win over the Detroit Lions. P.J. Walker started in his place and showed a lot of potential, if also plenty of room to grow.
Bridgewater was out because he suffered a right knee injury late in the previous week’s loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Jason Pierre-Paul tackled him low and from behind (a dirty hit he was later fined for), knocking Teddy out of the game. Bridgewater was “extremely limited” at practice last week according to coach Matt Rhule. He later estimated Bridgewater was arond 80-85% warming up during pregame but it didn’t feel right to play him given his history.
We will learn more about Bridgewater’s status later today when the first official injury report of Week 12 comes out.
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