The Carolina Panthers' playoffs hopes are dwindling fast. Cam Newton's return hasn't lit the spark Matt Rhule had hoped for. Additionally, Sam Darnold is making his return from injury. For that reason, the already murky quarterback situation has become even less clear.

According to ESPN, Matt Rhule is up in the air on who will play quarterback in Week 16. On one hand, he has Cam Newton who isn't getting the job done. On the other, he has Sam Darnold who has proven to be a bad acquisition for the Panthers. As of now, it sounds as though Rhule likes both quarterbacks:

“We'll continue to coach Cam and keep building off all the good things he's doing. We'll find out about Sam today and his health. I'm not going to look into the future. No hypotheticals.”

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At the very least, Rhule wants to give Cam Newton to keep the starting job. However, with the team struggling, the best decision might be to go back to Sam Darnold. The Panthers' head coach is using this week to find that answer, per ESPN.

“If Sam is healthy we'll practice him and see kind of where he's at. It's a good opportunity to shake some of the rust off him and see where he's at in the process. I can't speculate in terms of who will be the full-time guy this week until I have more information.”

It's an odd situation that Matt Rhule has put himself in. It's never an ideal situation to utilize a two-quarterback system. However, that's the situation the Panthers are in. We'll see how it plays out, but for now, nobody knows who will receive the bulk of the work. We could see both Newton and Darnold on the field against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.