And now the Carolina Panthers have two. The National Football League team named Albert Reese to its 53-man roster on Monday to start the upcoming 2026 season, making the 24-year-old their second Edmonton-area player. The Edmonton-born Reese joins starting running back Chuba Hubbard of Sherwood Park on the Panthers. Reese, who was one of three undrafted rookies to make the team’s initial 53, sticks with Carolina after playing five years of Division 1 college football in the U.S. with Mississippi State. The six-foot-seven, 330-pounder signed with the Panthers after being passed over in April’s NFL Draft. He started in two of the Panthers’ four preseason games last month, against the Texans on Friday and on Aug. 15 in Buffalo against the Bills. The Edmonton native played high school football locally at Harry Ainlay before transferring to Clearwater International Academy in Florida. The Saskatchewan Roughriders hold Reese’s Canadian Football League rights after taking him in the sixth round of this year’s draft. His father, Albert III, played five seasons in the CFL on Edmonton’s defensive line at the start of the century, winning a Grey Cup in 2003. The Elks, for whom he recorded 19 sacks and 155 tackles in 84 games, named him to their 2000s all-decade team. The senior Reese, an American, played college football at Grambling State and spent the late 1990s in the NFL, suiting up for five games in 1997 for the San Francisco 49ers and toiling on their practice squad.
