Christian McCaffrey officially designated to return from injured reserve

The Panthers officially announced on Twitter earlier today that they are removing Christian McCaffrey from injured reserve, after he has been battling a high ankle sprain for a month.

McCaffrey therefore will return to the active roster immediately, and the team doesn’t need to make any moves due to having an available roster spot with the release of wide receiver Seth Roberts. Roberts may have fallen out of favor with the coaching staff, due to reasons that could include this:

Taking Christian McCaffrey off the injured reserve list is not a definitive statement that he will play on Thursday night, but one would imagine the Panthers would have used the open spot elsewhere to provide depth if they didn’t think he would be ready. Based on that logic, I’ll say that McCaffrey will probably return to a shared workload this week, since we have no real reason to stop the Mike Davis train right now, and split time will benefit both players. In fact, I would say even when things normalize, I’d like to see Davis take about 30% of the reps, just to make McCaffrey that much more fresh in the fourth quarter.