It took about three nanoseconds after the College Football Playoff bracket was announced for ESPN’s production truck to throw it over to Nick Saban so that the former Alabama coach could spill some sour grapes all over the selection committee’s decision to pick SMU over the Crimson Tide for the last spot in the field.

“If we don’t take strength of schedule into consideration, is there any benefit to scheduling really good teams in the future?” he said. “Here at Alabama, we’re supposed to play Notre Dame, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Florida State in the future outside the league. Those are great games for fans to see, and that’s what I think we should be doing in college football is creating more good inventory for great games that people are interested in.

‘But do you enhance people wanting to do that – what’s the athletic director going to do? He may go cancel all those games now, knowing the SEC is tough enough.”

Get ready, because this is the talking point that will reverberate inside the SEC as it comes to terms with getting only three bids in the inaugural 12-team CFP. This is the justification commissioner Greg Sankey will use to pull all kinds of power plays on his fellow commissioners as he tries to strong-arm changes to the format that will benefit the SEC. This is the excuse athletics directors and coaches will use for the simple fact that they lost games they should have won.

But there’s one massive problem with Saban’s screed: It’s completely illogical.

Alabama didn’t miss the CFP because its schedule was too hard. If anything, Alabama missed the CFP because its schedule was too easy.

Easier than SMU’s? No, of course not. If you believe that Alabama’s 9-3 record was more deserving of the last CFP bid than SMU’s 11-2, that’s fine. Reasonable minds can disagree on that particular judgment, but the committee’s decision was not unusual or surprising given that the Mustangs lost the ACC championship game on a last-second, 56-yard field goal while Alabama sat at home Saturday and risked nothing.

These are conundrums the committee will face every single year in a 12- or 14-team format. When you get that far down in the rankings, there will be difficult choices between flawed teams without clear differences between them.

But instead of thinking about what kind of treatment SMU deserved, let’s consider what Alabama could have done to make a better argument over SMU.

Well for one thing, it could have simply beaten either Vanderbilt or Oklahoma. A 10-2 Alabama with only one bad loss almost certainly gets in. But beyond that, the only other thing Alabama could have done was to go outside the conference and beat a good team. Instead, its non-conference wins over Western Kentucky, South Florida, Wisconsin and Mercer did not boost either Alabama’s or the SEC’s image enough to erase two losses that playoff-worthy teams should not have on their resume.

The idea that Saban and other SEC-affiliated propagandists are trying to peddle is that the way to offset or compete against teams like SMU, Notre Dame and Indiana cruising into the Playoff this year is to make their own schedules easier.

Though that sounds good, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Because at the end of the day, Alabama’s fate – and Ole Miss’ for that matter as another three-loss team that believes it got short-shrift – had nothing to do with non-conference games. It had everything to do with losing to mediocre SEC teams. And guess what? There are going to be mediocre SEC teams on their schedule in 2025, 2026, 2027 and however many years the conference exists.

If the argument is that SEC teams have it so much tougher than everyone else and should be afforded grace for bad losses, the question should be: How many losses are acceptable to make the playoff? Three? Four?

And if what you want out of this system is total impunity to lose 24-3 to the worst Oklahoma team of the 21st century or, in Ole Miss’ case, to be the only SEC win all year for a bottom-feeder like Kentucky, there is only one way you can convince the public to buy it. You have no choice but to go beat the hell out of other power conferences and earn that benefit of the doubt.

The frustration is understandable. People who support Alabama, Ole Miss, South Carolina, etc., believe their team is better than several teams that got into the playoff. And they’re livid that Indiana, which didn’t have a top-25 win and got hammered by Ohio State, didn’t really face much scrutiny for its bid.

Maybe that’s true. But where is the actual evidence?

The only team among those three who actually had a real argument was South Carolina, which just last week went to Clemson and beat the ACC champions. But South Carolina’s problem was that it lost head-to-head to both Ole Miss and Alabama, and you couldn’t have reasonably expected them to jump the Gamecocks over the other two.

What, was the committee supposed to take all three? No chance. Not when Ole Miss and Alabama had records littered with questionable losses and both blew clear opportunities late in the season to secure their place in the field.

Part of having a 12-team playoff is accepting that margins are going to be thin and circumstances will change every year. This time, the cards didn’t fall the right way for the SEC because of just a couple of easily reversible results. Next time, it might work in their favor. But if the SEC tries to game the system by dumbing down non-conference schedules, it will fail.

If you believe the SEC is so tough that you’re going to lose a couple of games no matter what, the only answer is to beat up on other power conferences and earn that benefit of the doubt. The SEC had remarkably few quality non-conference wins this year, and two of them were Georgia beating Georgia Tech and Clemson. Had the Bulldogs lost the SEC championship to Texas on Saturday, those games would have undeniably helped them stay in the field and probably with a pretty good seed.

That’s the formula for SEC teams to convince the committee that their 9-3 is better than someone else’s 10-2. But if they want to take their ball and go home, they’ll deserve whatever happens to them.

Dear Oregon Ducks and head coach Dan Lanning,

This is the College Football Playoff selection committee. Congratulations on a wonderful season and a hard-won conference championship in your first year as a Big Ten member. We are highly impressed with your 13-0 record, especially in a season where so many teams faltered along the way. And when we consider that you had to fly to the Eastern or Central time zone four times, finishing off a perfect season with a 45-37 win over fellow playoff participant Penn State Saturday night, it is truly one of the great accomplishments of the last several years.

In fact, we as a committee are so enamored with what you’ve done, Oregon, that we are going to award you the playoff’s No. 1 seed. Again, many congrats.

But here’s the thing, Coach Lanning.

In every other sport that decides championships in a tournament format, the best teams or individuals get seeded in the order they are ranked to ensure that the bracket is balanced and fair. It doesn’t always work out perfectly, but this is considered standard practice to give the highest-seeded teams the easiest theoretical path possible toward a championship. After all, that’s what they’ve earned by virtue of their regular-season accomplishments.

If you thought that was how it was going to go in college football, though, the joke’s on you, Oregon. We don’t do things like other sports – at least not until we’re publicly shamed to a sufficient extent or dragged into court by antitrust lawyers.

But never mind that. Here’s the reality of your situation. Despite all the great things you’ve done, you are not getting the easiest path as a reward for being the top team in the country. Far from it, in fact. What the committee has cooked up for you is a quarterfinal against either Ohio State, which might be the sport’s most-talented and expensive roster, or a Tennessee team that is currently ranked No. 8 nationally in offense and No. 4 on defense.

In fact, if we were putting together the bracket strictly by our committee rankings, you’d never see either of these teams unless it was in the championship game. Instead, you’d be playing the winner of Boise State-Indiana in the quarterfinals. Oops!

Oh, but that’s not all. If you’re fortunate enough to survive that quarterfinal matchup on a neutral field – remember, you only beat Ohio State 32-31 at home a couple of months ago – you’re not going to get the winner of a favorable matchup between No. 4 Penn State and No. 5 Notre Dame in the semifinals. Rather, you’re very likely just going to get a No. 3-ranked Texas team that will be heavily favored to cruise over Clemson at home and then Arizona State in the quarterfinals.

In other words, even though the Longhorns didn’t beat a top-25 team all season and went 0-2 against Georgia, we are giving them an easier path to the semifinals than the one we’re giving you. And that’s kind of a theme in how we arranged this bracket.

Georgia, the No. 2 seed, gets the winner of Indiana-Notre Dame. Penn State, the team you just beat for the Big Ten title, gets SMU and then Boise State. If we are being real about it, Oregon, your first playoff game is probably going to have the smallest point spread of any quarterfinal.

We wish we could say as a committee that we gave you this burden because we think you’re a good enough team to handle it. But that wouldn’t be the truth. It’s because we are constrained by a nonsensical system that the conference commissioners came up with before they all decided to blow up their sport from coast-to-coast.

When the 12-team playoff was conceived, the idea was that conference championships should be rewarded with a first-round bye, and so the four highest-ranked title game winners would slot in as Nos. 1 through 4. But that was back when the conferences – although not perfectly even in strength – were similar enough that recognizing championships made sense.

What happened subsequently, though, is that Oklahoma and Texas left the Big 12 for the SEC. Then USC and UCLA left the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. Then the Pac-12 imploded, and we ended up with a bunch of 16-team leagues where it was impossible to have any scheduling balance, even within leagues. But because conference commissioners are inherently selfish and look out only for their best interests, not those of the sport at large, they could not agree on any adjustments to the 12-team format.

As a result, we were forced to give Boise State the No. 3 seed despite ranking them No. 9 and to give Arizona State the No. 4 seed despite ranking them No. 12. We were also too lazy to make any significant adjustments to seeding based on the results of the conference championship games and boxed ourselves in to some unfortunate imbroglios because ESPN forces us to go on television every week, give fake rankings with incomplete data and then try to explain them to the public.

So, at the end of the day, we recognize that the bracket is a nonsensical mess that puts you at a severe disadvantage. Here’s how our chairman, Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel, explains it.

“We rank the teams one through 25. That’s what we’ve been asked to do,” he said on ESPN. “We don’t discuss if we put this team at No. 1 and we move this team to No. 8 or 9 and they’re going to be playing each other and we need to go back and reconsider how we feel about them in the top 25. We’ve been asked as a committee to rank the best teams one through 25.

‘Then the seeding and what the commissioners set up is how to seed those teams come into play, and we only can go off what they want us to do as we seed the teams in the tournament. It turns out that is a very good game in terms of 8/9 and playing 1, but from the start, that’s what it was going to be, and we don’t know who those teams are until we get through the top 25.”

In other words, Oregon, we can only offer you a bunch of rhetorical gobbledygook that explains why our process stinks so badly. Oh well! That’s college sports for you. The Ducks aren’t the only ones who quack in this business.

We recognize that if this were a better system that made more sense, your season would have earned a much greater reward than having to face Ohio State or Tennessee. That’s not just not our problem, though.

It’s yours.

So enjoy the playoff. And congrats again on drawing the short straw.

Sincerely,

The College Football Playoff selection committee

The debates rage on, but the first 12-team College Football Playoff bracket is set.

The CFP selection committee released its final rankings Sunday after making several important decisions. It gave SMU the final at-large berth over Alabama, put Boise State ahead of Arizona State among conference champions receiving automatic bids into the field, and designated Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame and Ohio State as the four teams that will host first-round games in less than two weeks.

But the path each team faces to make the national championship game in Atlanta on Jan. 20 is not necessarily according to the seed received. So who has the easiest path to a title, and who has the hardest? Here’s a breakdown of what the bracket presents for every team that made the College Football Playoff field:

College Football Playoff bracket: Easiest path to national championship

1) Georgia

The team with the toughest strength of schedule in the country this year got rewarded for winning the SEC championship game with perhaps the best path to the national championship game – which is also being played down the road in Atlanta this season. Georgia received a bye in the first round and then faces either Notre Dame or Indiana at the Sugar Bowl in the CFP quarterfinals. If Georgia advances to the semifinals, a matchup with Boise State, Penn State or SMU awaits.

2) Texas

The SEC didn’t get four teams in the field, but the Longhorns only lost to one team this year (Georgia), and they’ve got a very reasonable path to the semifinals as the highest-ranked at-large team. Texas has a home game against the lowest-ranked team in the field (Clemson) in the CFP first round, and Big 12 champion Arizona State would await at the Peach Bowl in the CFP quarterfinals. Undefeated Oregon, Ohio State or Tennessee would be the Longhorns’ opponent in the CFP semifinals.

3) Boise State

The Mountain West champions get a first-round bye and wound up as the third-highest ranked conference champion in the field ahead of both Arizona State and Clemson. That distinction gives Boise State a CFP quarterfinal game against either Penn State or SMU at the Fiesta Bowl, instead of having to travel to Atlanta for the Peach Bowl. Georgia, Notre Dame or Indiana would loom in the CFP semifinals.

4) Penn State

The Big Ten runner-up looks to have an easier path to the national championship than the Big Ten champion, a potential flaw to be addressed in the wake of this year’s bracket reveal. Penn State has a home game against the final at-large team in the field (SMU) in the first round and Group of Five conference representative Boise State awaits the winner at the Fiesta Bowl in the CFP quarterfinals.

5) Oregon

The only undefeated team in the country got a first-round bye, but the seeding imbalance created by requiring the top four conference champions to be the top four seeds appears to have affected the Ducks more than others. Oregon will play Ohio State or Tennessee in the Rose Bowl and then would have Arizona State, Texas or Clemson awaiting in the CFP semifinals.

6) Arizona State

The Sun Devils had an argument to be the No. 3 seed, which would have presented a more favorable route through the bracket. Arizona State does have a first-round bye but must travel across the country to play either Texas or Clemson in the Peach Bowl for the CFP quarterfinals.

CFP bracket: Hardest path to national championship

1) Indiana

The Hoosiers would address any lingering concerns about their strength of schedule if they make it to the CFP national championship game. They’ve got arguably the toughest road to the title. Indiana would have to win at Notre Dame, beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, and then defeat Boise State, Penn State or SMU in the CFP semifinals.

2) Tennessee

The Vols just missed out on hosting a first-round home game and now must win at Ohio State and beat Oregon at the Rose Bowl just to qualify for the CFP semifinals. Both of Tennessee’s losses this season came away from Neyland Stadium.

3) Clemson

The Tigers were the last team to make the field as the No. 12 seed, and it would be quite the feat for them to make the national championship game. Clemson has a road game at Texas in the first round just to reach the CFP quarterfinals against Arizona State, and top-seeded Oregon would potentially be awaiting in the CFP semifinals.

4) SMU

The biggest debate in this 12-team bracket revolved around SMU’s inclusion over Alabama, but the Mustangs’ place in the bracket leaves some opportunity to make a run. SMU will have to beat Penn State on the road in the first round, and Boise State would be its quarterfinal opponent.

5) Ohio State

The Buckeyes are still licking their wounds after losing to Michigan to close the season, but they still have a chance to win a national championship with a first-round home game against Tennessee. The top-seeded Ducks, whom Ohio State nearly beat in Eugene, Oregon in October, looms as a potential CFP quarterfinal matchup.

6) Notre Dame

The Fighting Irish wound up behind Texas and Penn State but ahead of Ohio State in the CFP seeding, and its path to the national championship is commensurate with that. Notre Dame hosts Indiana in an in-state rivalry game in the CFP first round, and the winner gets Georgia in the quarterfinals.

The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.

Puka Nacua produced a notable performance in the Los Angeles Rams’ 44-42 victory over the Buffalo Bills.

His effort not only made Rams fans happy, but fantasy football owners as well.

Here’s how the second-year receiver did on Sunday evening.

How did Rams WR Puka Nacua do against the Bills?

Nacua had 12 receptions for 162 receiving yards and a touchdown. He also contributed to the Rams’ rushing attack with five carries for 16 yards and a touchdown.

All things Rams: Latest Los Angeles Rams news, schedule, roster, stats, injury updates and more.

He is the first Rams player with 125 receiving yards and a rushing touchdown in the same game since 2006. Former Rams running back Steven Jackson had 133 receiving yards and a rushing touchdown against the Kansas City Chiefs in St. Louis.

Nacua had nine touches across 16 snaps in motion (five carries & four receptions), resulting in 85 scrimmage yards against Buffalo, according to NFL’s Next Gen Stats.

Puka Nacua racks up fantasy points

Nacua produced 35.80 fantasy points in Yahoo Sports’ standard fantasy league with his performance against Buffalo this week. He was initially projected to record 13.50 points against the Bills.

He surpassed his highest mark of the season, which was 21.80 against the New England Patriots in Week 11. 

Puka Nacua’ big catch

Nacua drew attention on social media for his highlight-reel catch near the sideline while keeping his feet inbounds.

All the NFL news on and off the field. Sign up for USA TODAY’s 4th and Monday newsletter.

Josh Allen made NFL history against the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday.

The Buffalo Bills’ MVP hopeful added another line to an already impressive résumé this season when he became the first player in NFL history to throw for three touchdowns and rush for three more in the same game.

Allen finished the day 22-of-37 in the air for 342 passing yards and three passing touchdowns. He also was the Bills’ leading rusher with 82 yards and three rushing touchdowns on 10 carries.

Sunday’s performance was the gunslinger’s first of the season with 300+ passing yards and 50+ rushing yards. It was also his first time scoring more than one touchdown both in the air and on the ground.

Despite Allen’s efforts, the Bills couldn’t pull out the victory. They dropped the Week 14 game, 44-42, as Rams receiver Puka Nacua gashed the Buffalo passing defense for 162 yards and a touchdown on 12 catches.

All things Bills: Latest Buffalo Bills news, schedule, roster, stats, injury updates and more.

Josh Allen stats

After Sunday’s performance, here’s where Allen’s stats stand with four games to play:

Completion rate: 252-of-393 (64.1%)
Passing yards: 3,033
Yards per completion: 12.0
Passing touchdowns: 23
Interceptions: 5
Rush attempts: 80
Rushing yards: 416
Yards per carry: 5.2
Rushing touchdowns: 9

New Orleans Saints quarterback Derek Carr is no Superman.

While attempting a headfirst dive to secure a first down, the 33-year-old veteran tumbled over two New York Giants defenders and teammate Kevin Austin Jr.

Carr landed face-first, short of the first down and had to exit the game with a hand injury after the play.

Here’s the latest on the Saints quarterback:

Derek Carr injury update

Later on Sunday afternoon, NFL Network reported that Carr might have suffered a fracture in his left (non-throwing) hand.

NFL STATS CENTRAL: The latest NFL scores, schedules, odds, stats and more.

With just under four minutes left in the fourth quarter, New Orleans backup quarterback Jake Haener took over under center and played for the remainder of the game, which the Saints won, 14-11.

Saints interim head coach Darren Rizzi said Carr suffered a left hand injury during the play. Rizzi also said the quarterback was being evaluated for a concussion but couldn’t confirm whether his quarterback was in the protocol yet.

Before his injury, Carr was 20-of-31 for 219 yards with one touchdown and one interception.

Saints QB depth chart

With Carr potentially out with his injury going forward, here’s how the Saints’ depth chart looks at quarterback:

Derek Carr (left hand injury, possible concussion)
Jake Haener
Spencer Rattler

Haener was the Saints’ fourth-round pick in the 2023 NFL draft. He has yet to start a game in his two-year career.

Rattler was a fifth-round pick by the Saints in the 2024 draft. He started three games for New Orleans while Carr was out with an oblique injury earlier this year. The rookie went 0-3 in those three starts.

This story will be updated as information becomes available.

Look at the pitiful ACC. No shame at all. 

Celebrating Clemson and SMU in the College Football Playoff as a verifying and flag-planting moment for the conference on the verge of collapse.

Clemson, the ACC champion and automatic qualifier, is suing the ACC to leave the league. 

SMU, the ACC’s at-large CFP selection, paid $200 million to get into the ACC, and was only allowed to join if it forfeited all media rights cash for nine years. 

Nine years. 

That’s right, SMU – which Sunday afternoon raised the profile of a dying conference by securing a precious at-large CFP bid over SEC heavyweight Alabama – is an unpaid intern for a decade.

SMU, which just added untold millions to the ACC’s coffers and will add more with every win in the playoff, is monetarily supplementing the other 15 teams in the league.  And the ACC is trumpeting this from on all high.

That’s the story of this controversial day in college football — and all the tentacles that go with it. Not SMU’s questionable choice over Alabama, or Indiana’s layup to the way up and into the CFP.

Not why, with the sport barreling toward the NFL model, the CFP decided to stick with the college sports bracket model instead of reseeding the field after the first round — thus delivering No.1 Oregon the most difficult road among the four teams receiving first round byes.

This is about SMU legitimizing the ACC, and saving the league from its own inevitable undoing of falling further behind the SEC and Big Ten because of a poor product on the field.  

UPS AND DOWNS: Winners and losers from the playoff reveal

POSTSEASON LINEUP: Complete college football bowl schedule

You want college football like it used to be (or always has been)? Thank a billionaire. 

Thank one of the handful of SMU boosters that pooled together some pocket change to get the Mustangs into a power conference. Left for dead long ago with the dismantling of the old Southwest Conference, SMU reached out to the very people who earned them the NCAA’s big haircut in the 1980s to save themselves from drifting further into college football irrelevance. 

Who could’ve known they’d take the ACC along with them in year 1?

‘It’s a couple hundred million dollars,’ SMU mega booster David Miller told Yahoo!, “I’m not losing sleep over it.”

Fat cat boosters are people, too, everyone. 

But this is more than just another ACC team in the College Football Playoff. Because when the conference commissioners meet this offseason to discuss the format and financials of the new 2026 playoff contract, the Big Ten and SEC’s ability to demand more from the ACC and Big 12 or else has at least been slowed. Momentarily. 

The SEC will use Alabama’s snub as an opportunity to declare it needs four (or more) automatic bids moving forward in a 14-team playoff. The Big Ten will do the same. 

The only pushback for the ACC – which could lose both Clemson and the original disrupter, Florida State, to legal action – is the statement made by SMU in Year 1 as an ACC member. 

A conference on the rise, the ACC will argue. When everyone is playing on a level field in 2025 with the $20 million salary cap, watch how the gap between the have and have nots shrinks.

Miami was the second team out in this year’s CFP, and if the projected 14-team format of 2026 were currently in play, the ACC would have three teams in the CFP. You want an all at-large field, as SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has floated? We’ll take it.

Why do I have a vision of Fredo, slobbering over himself, demanding respect from Michael Corleone, knowing it’s a futile ask?

‘I’m smart, and I want respect!’

If the ACC presidents were proactive, they’d use this power move by SMU as leverage against Florida State and Clemson. In other words, we had three teams in the top 14, and FSU — the one school with the greatest upside in the conference — lost 10 games in a rare step back. 

This isn’t rocket science. Come up with a revenue sharing agreement that benefits the conference bluebloods, and give your conference a fighting chance to stay relevant.

If the rest of the conference doesn’t like that Florida State, Clemson, Miami and North Carolina are receiving more of the media rights pie, find a few sugar daddy boosters of your own and get better. Or you could be unpaid interns, too, in college football’s rapidly-changing environment. 

And end up like Fredo.

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.

Bryce Young had the look he wanted. With 54 seconds to go, trailing by six and with no timeouts in his pocket against the Philadelphia Eagles, the Carolina Panthers quarterback saw the opposing secondary presenting a coverage that would allow Xavier Legette to sneak behind the defense on the post route head coach Dave Canales had dialed up.

Young took the second-and-4 snap and from the Philadelphia 32-yard line. As the pocket formed around him, he confidently stepped up into the middle as Legette made his break toward the end zone. Young fired in his direction, and everything about the play had the makings of a touchdown that would tie the game at 22 prior to an extra point. The Panthers were on the cusp of knocking off arguably the NFL’s hottest team in the Eagles, who entered with an eight-game winning streak.

But the officials never signaled touchdown. Replay made it clear what they saw on the field; Legette, the 32nd overall pick in the draft out of South Carolina, never secured the ball before the pigskin hit the turf, and the ground clearly caused the ball to move.

Incomplete. The Panthers had two more chances to gain 4 yards and secure a new set of downs. No dice.

“(Expletive), I thought I caught that (expletive),” Legette told reporters after the game.

All things Panthers: Latest Carolina Panthers news, schedule, roster, stats, injury updates and more.

Legette said he didn’t know the ball hit the ground until a replay was shown on the Lincoln Financial Field jumbotron.

Asked if he felt like he had control before the ball hit the ground he said: “Hell yeah.”

Inside of two minutes, and without any timeouts, Canales had no way to ask for an official review.

“I thought it would have been the protocol,’ Canales said of a potential review. ‘The ball moved around a little bit … the officials saw it, we saw it on the sideline, it was close. Gonna have to look at it again.”

Canales said that the mishap was ‘absolutely’ a play he expects Legette to make.

‘That’s a big play we’re counting on. He’d be the first one to tell you he’s got to make that play,’ Canales said. ‘Bryce steps up, makes a beautiful throw in that situation, had the coverage we wanted. Those are the types of plays we have to make to get back in the winning column.’

The Panthers have been lining up Legette as the ‘X’ receiver, a position that presents plenty of target opportunities, Canales said. Legette finished with two catches for 39 yards on eight targets.

Legette was on the other side of Young’s most impressive play of the day. As Carolina started the final drive from its own 3-yard line, Young evaded a sack that would have resulted in a safety and dropped a dime to Legette near the left sideline while almost throwing across his body.

“Felt like we were gonna be 97 yards with a chance to win,” Canales said.

Legette came up slow after the pickup of 31 yards and was briefly evaluated on the sideline before returning.

‘We’re counting on him … these are all things that we take and we learn and we grow (from), and I truly believe that we’re going to be in high-stakes games going against great teams and great players and we’re going to have to make those plays,’ said Canales, alluding to his team’s loss last Sunday in overtime against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which came after running back Chuba Hubbard fumbled as the Panthers were in game-winning field-goal range.

Young (19-for-34, 194 passing yards, one touchdown, one interception) said his belief in Legette remains strong and that he is a ‘great player’ with a ‘super-bright future.’

‘I know he knows I always believe in him,’ Canales said. ‘I always know he’s going to make the next one. I’m always going to have faith in that. I see how hard he works, the type of guy he is. Great for us, great in the locker room. It’s tough for us. We all miss things.’

Young said he will reinforce his words by showing him – the quarterback’s not going to stop throwing him the ball.

“I trust him in every situation,’ Young said. ‘That’s not going to change.”

Fellow Panthers wideout Adam Thielen hadn’t talked to the Legette yet when he met the media after the game, but the 11-year veteran wants the 23-year-old to know every receiver has experienced something similar at some point in their careers.

“He’s a hard worker,’ Thielen said. ‘He does things the right way. We’re proud of him. He had a great game. Just keep working, and we’re there for him.’