When the Carolina Panthers put defensive end Charles Johnson on injured reserve/designated to return with a hamstring injury in Week 4, their pass rush was expected to disappear. Instead, it got better, and this week it gets to add the player who's racked up the second-most sacks in franchise history.

Coach Ron Rivera on Monday said the plan is to activate Johnson on Tuesday. He's practiced the past two weeks, but the earliest he was eligible to return on game day was against the Cowboys. The timing worked out about as well as possible for the Panthers.

"That was one of the things that we talked about when we were putting him down," Rivera said. "To have him as fresh as possible as we start getting into the latter part of the season, we'll have him ready to roll."

A day after Johnson re-aggravated his hamstring against the Saints, the Panthers traded a 2016 sixth-round pick to Chicago for 12-year veteran Jared Allen, the league's active sack leader. Since then, he's combined with emerging young players like defensive end Kony Ealy and defensive tackle Kawann Short to make the Panthers' pass rush a surprisingly disruptive force.

 

 

Carolina currently sits second in the NFL with 31 sacks. Of those, 24 came while Johnson was out, a number that eclipses the season sack totals of 18 teams.

Johnson's return complicates things a bit for the coaching staff. Between him, Allen and Ealy, who starts and how do they split snaps? File it under one of those good problems to have.

"Having him back and getting him back in the fold should mean some really good things for us. As we go forward into this stretch, we want to have our best players available," Rivera said. "It's good to see him out there and now we've got to go ahead and mix it up and see what the best combination of guys are for us as we go forward."