CHARLOTTE— The Panthers will play their starters on Saturday versus the Buffalo Bills…hopefully. That's what Dave Canales said on Thursday anyway, when previewing his plan for the final preseason game.

"My hope is to get the starters out there early in the game, get them some exposure," Canales said. "The importance of it to me is how valuable the night before prep is. Waking up in the morning, we have a 1 o'clock kick, we got a lot of those this year. So just the body readiness.

"This is a great opportunity to go through their pregame routines with each other, to have the communications on the sidelines as we go into the first drive there and just gather information. Talk, 'this is how it'll feel like.' So, I love this opportunity for the guys and they're excited about it."

Asked if this was just the plan for one group or only certain units, Canales clarified, "I hope all starters are playing."

Starters to this point have not played any snaps in the first two preseason games. The club sat more than 30 players in each of the first two games. Canales told reporters on Thursday that he was never opposed to playing those guys in the first two weeks.

"Honestly, it was really just about the grasp of the system," Canales explained. "Going back to that, talking about the confident play. I was open to playing them in the first one. I was open to playing in the second one. We had that great, great week of work against the Jets and we had a couple of guys, we knew we were going to get back this week. So it was like, why don't we wait another week to get a stronger group to put out there.

"But, again, watching the practices, watching those first couple of games and seeing, OK, it feels like we have a great grasp of what we're doing now, so that we can go out there and be confident. I didn't want to go out there and just kind of stumble around stuff as we're still figuring out our schemes and all that. But for this week, "I'd love to get them sweaty. I'd love to get them the full work of coming play in and play out."

The coach isn't putting a set number on quarterback Bryce Young's playing time, saying he wasn't yet sure if Young's time on the field would be determined by snap counts or drive counts.

Young isn't the only quarterback the Panthers want to see on Saturday. Andy Dalton has not played in the preseason yet either, due in large part to a quad injury that held the veteran out the first two weeks. Dalton has been able to practice the past week and Canales said coaches will closely evaluate Dalton's status over the next 24 hours to determine how much he could possibly play on Saturday.

"Andy is the one that we, outside of the other group, that's one we really do have to talk about tonight, talk about tomorrow and really see what the smartest thing to do for the Panthers is, in regards to Andy," Canales said. "I would love to see him play. I would love to see Andy be able to distribute the ball out there so we can really evaluate the wideouts, tight ends, the different positions out there. So, he'll be really probably a day to day decision there."

The Bills announced earlier in the week that their starters would not play Saturday, after receiving snaps in the first two weeks (quarterback Josh Allen played eight whole snaps). But Canales had already stated that the Bills' decision would not impact what he wanted to see from his team.