The Chargers have sent defensive tackle TeRah Edwards to Carolina, landing a 2028 sixth-round pick in return, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. The deal came right before Sunday’s 6 p.m. ET deadline for teams to lock in their 53-man rosters.
Edwards arrived in the league as an undrafted free agent out of Illinois in 2025 after five college seasons split between Northwestern and Illinois. Over that stretch from 2020 through 2024, he piled up 67 combined tackles, 7.0 tackles for loss, 4.0 sacks, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery.
The 6-foot-2, 305-pound lineman did not get into a regular-season game as a rookie. Instead, he spent the 2025 campaign developing on Los Angeles’ practice squad. He did see the field in the preseason, where he played in three games and posted 10 combined tackles, 11 pressures and seven stops.
His 2026 preseason kept that momentum going. In the Chargers’ finale against the Los Angeles Rams, Edwards added four tackles and two pressures, and he kept showing the kind of disruption that can make a defensive line coach take notice.
Still, the numbers game was tough in Los Angeles. Edwards was fighting for a spot in a loaded interior group that already included Teair Tart, Dalvin Tomlinson, Jamaree Caldwell, Justin Eboigbe and Nick Barrett, with the team having invested heavily in both draft capital and salary-cap space at the position.
Rather than expose him to the waiver wire, the Chargers chose to cash in his preseason work for draft value.
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