Austin Corbett had just limped off field, watched his team nearly come all the way back from 17 points down, and began coming to grips with the inevitable as he stared at his swollen knee — but then something pushed him over the edge.
His 3-year-old daughter.
She asked an innocent and caring but heartbreaking question.
The center for the Carolina Panthers, as is per custom, got back to the locker room and picked up his phone. He called home. His wife, Madison, had seen his injury happen in real time. Late in the fourth quarter, as the Panthers were moving the ball on the Arizona defense to make it a one-score game, Corbett was doing his job, protecting his quarterback, when Cardinals rookie outside linebacker Jordan Burch lost his footing and crashed into Corbett’s legs, pinning his left foot in place and bending his knee in a way it shouldn’t.
Corbett lay on the ground in pain. He braced for the worst as the game finished. He limped to the locker room. And as he got on speakerphone with his wife and three kids, his 3-year-old daughter, Landry, asked him an earnest question.
“Hey Dad,” she said. “Did you hurt yourself again? You OK?”
Carolina Panthers center Austin Corbett and assistant head coach and run game coordinator Harold Goodwin, right, watch players run through a drill with during the team’s OTA practice on May 27. JEFF SINER jsiner@charlotteobserver.com
He told her he had gotten injured again, yes. It marked his fourth significant injury in four years — and his third knee ailment, specifically. He responded to his daughter with as much cheer as he could muster. But something else lingered.
“A lot of darkness,” he said. “A lot of bad things. It’s one thing if they’re injuries that arise from me not taking care of my body, or something else. But this is just the game of football. I got another human that just destroyed my leg. I can’t do anything about it.
“You get those questions of like, ‘Why do we play football? What are we doing?’”
Other questions, too:
Dad, are you OK?
And at that moment, in that quiet locker room, with that swollen knee, Corbett didn’t know what to say. He just knew how he felt. His kids were at the top of his mind:
“I can’t keep doing this to them.”
Carolina Panthers center Austin Corbett (63) during Fanfest at Bank of America Stadium. Jim Dedmon USA TODAY NETWORK
Austin Corbett’s injury history
Corbett told this story in front of his locker on Monday morning. It’d been four weeks since that dark day, since he heard his daughter’s heartbreaking question. And he was smiling.
It turned out that Corbett’s knee injury ended up being a torn MCL — an injury serious enough to put him on the injured reserve but not one that required invasive surgery like an ACL tear would. The swelling had lessened, too. And four weeks after writhing on the field, head coach Dave Canales told reporters that Corbett’s 21-day practice window opened Wednesday.
Corbett, in other words, is still on the injured reserve — still not activated to the 53-man roster. But he has 21 days to practice and get himself back on the field.
He thought about his kids again.
“When you bring the kids into it, it’s a whole different element of it,” Corbett said. “But I love, even when I’m not playing a game yesterday, when I look up to them and I can wave to them in the stands, and find them, or they’re finding me, I want to do this for them.”
“They live such a freaking cool life because I get to do this,” he continued. “When we get to bring them in the locker room. Their life isn’t normal. But it’s normal to them. ... When they go to school, that’s what their dad does. And I just want to keep doing that for them. I just love it.”
Carolina Panthers QB Bryce Young hosted his second annual youth football camp on June 7 at Johnson C. Smith University. Head coach Dave Canales, center Austin Corbett, right tackle Taylor Moton and wide receiver Xavier Legette were among the volunteers at the event. Mike Kaye The Charlotte Observer
Corbett has been through a lot
Corbett didn’t outright say he considered retirement after that Week 2 game. But it sounds like the 29-year-old center was closer than he’s been in his eight-year career. And Corbett has been through a lot.
The first issue came in 2022. The then-right guard tore his ACL sprinting downfield in the team’s season-finale against the New Orleans Saints. The next one came in 2023; just four games after returning from the ACL surgery, in Week 11, he tore his MCL, and the team shut him down for the year instead of rushing him back.
Ahead of the 2024 season, Corbett had two knee injuries in back-to-back years and was switching positions from right guard to center. He shut that discussion down. He felt healthy, he said. He was ready for the center swap, he added. Then, five games into 2024, he sustained an injury to his biceps that would take 12 weeks to recover from.
Another season had ended short.
Austin Corbett, speaks to the media after practice Saturday on July 27, 2024. John D. Simmons
Keep Pounding. ‘That’s your only option’
Coming into 2025, he signed a one-year, incentive-laden, prove-it deal with the Panthers. He accepted it knowing he’d be competing with center Cade Mays, who performed admirably in Corbett’s stead in 2024, for the starting role. He won the role.
Then came the first tough loss. Then the Week 2 injury. Mays then stepped in again, playing the center role. And he did so just as the offense hit its stride. That includes the emergence of Rico Dowdle and quarterback Bryce Young. That includes the ascension of the entire team, which is 3-3 on the year — .500 for the first time since November 2021.
All the while, Corbett was feeling better, stronger, trusting his legs, sitting in meetings and observing practices from the sidelines. He still loved game day, still loved the home games where he could find his kids in the crowd, still loved that this was his job and life.
You might imagine an injury would dampen the joy a win at home brings. But ask him, and he smiles: “It’s days like yesterday,” he said of Sunday’s win over the Cowboys, “even when I’m not playing, it’s the energy. It’s the passion with your brothers out there on the field that makes it worth it.”
“Football is the greatest game in the world,” he continued. “If you’re doing your 1/11th, it is the best feeling in the world. And that’s why you keep chasing it.”
Carolina Panthers center Austin Corbett (63) snaps the ball against the Las Vegas Raiders at Allegiant Stadium during a 2024 game. Kirby Lee Imagn Images
Corbett will keep chasing it, he said, because he only has so many years of playing left.
He wants to prove something else, too.
To his children, and to himself.
“Life’s going to get hard,” Corbett said. “Football in and of itself is hard. You’re going to have challenges. It’s the principle of showing them: ‘You’re going to get knocked down. Things are going to suck in life. It’s going to be hard. Whatever the situation is, you have to find a way. No matter what, you gotta find a way to get through it. You’re going to be fine. There’s light on the other side of whatever situation. That’s what I’m trying to instill in them. You just gotta keep going.
“I love being here. Especially with that, ‘Keep Pounding’ mantra. Because that’s your only option in life. I don’t care what’s going on, things are hard, things are going to suck. But you have to keep going. There’s no other way.”