CANTON, Ohio (AP) — The Arizona Cardinals will take on the Carolina Panthers in the annual Hall of Fame exhibition game on Aug. 6 as part of enshrinement week.
The Hall announced the matchup on Wednesday between two of the teams that have former stars set to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame next summer.
Longtime Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald and Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly are part of a five-person class for the Hall that will be inducted on Aug. 8. The other inductees are Drew Brees, Roger Craig and Adam Vinatieri.
Arizona will be designated as the home team for the game that will be the debut for new coach Mike LaFleur.
The Cardinals will be making their sixth all-time appearance in the Hall of Fame game with the most recent coming in 2017 against Dallas. The franchise played in the first Hall of Fame game ever in 1962 against the New York Giants, more than a year before the museum opened.
The Panthers will be back for the second time after making their debut as a franchise in 1995 against fellow expansion team Jacksonville.
The game will be broadcast by NBC.
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Arizona Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur speaks during a press conference at the NFL football scouting combine in Indianapolis, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
The first round of primary elections is showing how this year's midterms will be taking place on shifting political ground for incumbents.
That was particularly true in Texas — the first state to redraw its congressional districts last year — where two incumbent members of Congress have been pushed to a runoff and another has been scuttled from the House altogether.
Democratic Rep. Al Green, an outspoken liberal who has twice been ejected from President Donald Trump’s State of the Union addresses for protesting, and newly elected Rep. Christian Menefee will compete in the May 26 runoff for a Houston-area district.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican and former Navy SEAL with an independent streak, faced attacks from the party’s hard right that he was not in lockstep with Trump, and was the state’s only House Republican not to win the president's endorsement. He lost to Steve Toth, a Republican state lawmaker who received late backing from Sen. Ted Cruz.
Incumbents also are in close races in Texas and North Carolina that were too early to call early Wednesday.
A look at where things stand after Tuesday's primaries:
The unusual primary between two sitting Democratic congressmen in Texas was the result of redrawn voting maps that Trump ordered ahead of November’s midterm elections. Green, 78, switched to run in the newly redrawn 18th Congressional District after his current district was redrawn to favor Republicans.
Menefee, 37, was sworn in to Congress only a month ago after winning a special election to fill the remaining term of Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died last year. For some Houston voters, Tuesday’s primary was their third time casting ballots in a congressional race in four months, sowing confusion.
Green, who was first elected to the U.S. House in 2004, is one of his party’s most outspoken Trump critics and filed articles of impeachment during the president’s first term.
The primary is one of the generational competitions among Democrats this year, as younger candidates argue it's time for a new crop of party leaders. Green has faced concerns from within the party, which is increasingly unwilling to defer to seniority.
Crenshaw, seeking his fifth term in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, was the state’s only House Republican whom Trump didn’t endorse heading into the nation’s first big primary of 2026.
The former Navy SEAL, whose independent streak sometimes clashed with fellow Republicans, spent the primary trying to fend off attacks from the party’s hard right that he wasn't in step with Trump’s agenda.
Toth, a state representative and member of the GOP’s hard-right caucus in the Legislature, picked up a big endorsement late in the primary from Cruz.
“This campaign has been a referendum on representatives who campaign one way and govern another, and the people have spoken,” Toth said in a statement after his victory.
Crenshaw, who lost his right eye when he was hit with an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2012, had clashed with Cruz over the senator’s support of Trump’s unfounded claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.
He was one of the few Texas Republican candidates for Congress in 2022 who acknowledged that President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was legitimate, a position that occasionally found him at odds with fellow Republicans.
Crenshaw also drew the ire of conservatives when a video clip went viral of him criticizing some Republican politicians as “grifters” and “performance artists” who simply tell conservative voters what they want to hear.
Texas Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, speaks during a news conference Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020, in Porter, Texas. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via AP)
