There’s still hope for Bryce Young. His career in Carolina might be over, barring an injury to Andy Dalton, but just look at the quarterbacks who won on Sunday.
Geno Smith, Baker Mayfield, Derek Carr, Justin Fields and Sam Darnold – players who’ve found new life with new teams — are each 2-0. And Garnder Minshew, fresh off an impressive win at Baltimore, is the NFL’s only quarterback to pass for at least 250 yards in each game this year.
But Young’s play over his first 18 NFL starts was on par if not worse than the start of any quarterback’s career ever. Even before the season, some expected the Panthers to bench Young at some point in 2024. What’s worse is the Panthers still owe Chicago a second-round selection in April before the door finally closes on the disastrous trade. Jim Harbaugh had no mercy for the former No. 1 overall selection. Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated spoke to Chargers coaches and got a window into why Young imploded.
“The Chargers staff saw a quarterback who’d stopped looking downfield, struggled to see the field from the pocket, and kept dropping his eyes and looking at the rush—the sign of a player who’s taken too many hits and doesn’t want to take any more,” Breer wrote on Tuesday.
“He looked better when Carolina’s coaches moved the pocket and got him out on the edge, but there were only three such calls Sunday. And, clearly, as the Chargers challenged Young in this area, and as their advance scouting proved true, Young’s receivers grew frustrated.”
One of those receivers, 11th-year veteran Adam Thielen, said he let those frustrations boil over.
“When you step in between those lines, you have to be a different type of player,” Thielen said after the 26-3 loss to the Chargers. “You have to play with emotion. If you don’t, you’re not going to have success.
“When you put so much into this game, into game-planning, how you practice, how you fight through some stuff, you just want to see progression. You want to see us moving forward as a team. It boiled over. I’m not making any excuses. I shouldn’t do that. But at the same time when I step in between those lines, I turn into a different person. I’ve learned in my career that you have to be.”
Now, Carolina gets a different person at quarterback, Andy Dalton, and a completely different outlook entering the rest of the season. Cincinnati’s first-round selection in the 2011 draft, Dalton led the Bengals to playoff berths in each of his first four NFL seasons (2011-14). Now with his fifth team, Dalton leads the Panthers (0-2) into a Week 3 matchup at Las Vegas (1-1) on Sunday (4:05 p.m. ET, CBS).