Panthers coach Dave Canales reveals rookie Nic Scourton suffered a collapsed lung

Carolina Panthers rookie pass rusher Nic Scourton was not active for today's preseason game against the houston Texans, nor was he seen on the sideline. Now, we know why. During his postgame press conference, head coach Dave Canales revealed to reporters that he suffered a collapsed lung during one of the joint practices earlier this week with the Texans.

“It was a very physical play. It was presenting like heat exhaustion because he was having trouble breathing, he was getting tired, and all that," he explained. "We cooled him down. We couldn’t get him to respond good enough to where we felt comfortable about putting him back into practice. I attribute the training staff for knowing where he was at and saying, ‘This is not a guy that needs to return to practice today.’ The symptoms kind of grew after practice, so we checked him into the hospital, and that’s where they told us what was happening. Scourton was driving home; he’s on his way back to Charlotte. I think he might have made it back yesterday. We’ll keep evaluating him. I don’t really know a timeline. It’s really week to week with those types of things. I’ve heard from different trainers and different coaches who have been around this, where a guy played the next week. We just got to be smart with that one.”

When asked why Scourton had to drive back to Charlotte, Canales responded, “It’s a precautionary deal. I just learned about it. They said when you have that type of a chest injury, the cabin pressure, the elevation, and all that can present issues, so the best course of action was to get him in a car driving back to Charlotte and continuing his treatment in Charlotte.”

The second-round pick has already shown some very intriguing signs in his first few months with the organization and is expected to rotate into the lineup pretty heavily, assuming he returns from this injury at 100%.

The Panthers will round out the preseason next week at home against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and with it being a meaningless game and much of the back end of the roster likely to play the majority of snaps, it's probably not worth having Scourton suit up.

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