With just over eight minutes remaining in the third quarter of Sunday’s Panthers-Chargers game and Carolina facing a third-and-7, quarterback Bryce Young lined up in the shotgun. Three receivers were flanked to his left, with Adam Thielen lined up farthest inside. Los Angeles did little to disguise its defensive plan, positioning one safety in the deep middle of the field and another in the intermediate area—telltale signs of man coverage. When there’s help in the middle, cornerbacks in man are taught to favor their receiver’s outside shoulder, so Thielen’s crossing route, which plays against that leverage, was almost guaranteed to pop open if the pass protection held up long enough. The Panthers had the perfect play on.
After the snap, the offensive line did its job, carving out a decently sized pocket for Young to operate from. The Panthers quarterback, who was taken first in the 2023 NFL draft after Carolina traded two first- and second-round picks plus star receiver DJ Moore to Chicago for the pick, initially looked to Diontae Johnson before his eyes shifted toward Thielen. Thielen had already shaken free of coverage and was running into wide-open space downfield, but Young didn’t see it. With his left guard, Damien Lewis, starting to cede ground to Khalil Mack, Young panicked, dropped his eyes, and tried to exit the pocket before getting enveloped by Joey Bosa for a drive-ending sack. Thielen had been open. The offensive line had held up. The ball just wasn’t thrown.
After the play, the CBS broadcast showed a visibly frustrated Thielen venting on his way to the bench. And with his team down 23-3, it was hard to blame him.
Thielen said he regretted the incident after the game: “When you put so much into this game—into game planning, into 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,” he said. “So, yeah, boiled-over frustration.”
But while Thielen said he didn’t blame Young for the issues the offense was having, the play call in that instance was the correct one. The pass protection was sound. The primary receiver on the play got wide-ass open. The quarterback just had to make the throw, and he didn’t. That’s been a common occurrence throughout Young’s 18 starts in Carolina. He has yet to find comfort in an NFL pocket, which is the root cause of his struggles. He hasn’t been accurate, and the playmaking ability that helped him win a Heisman Trophy at Alabama hasn’t translated to the next level. He’s looked out of his depth since he first stepped on the field and has shown no signs of improvement. So now the team is moving forward.
On Monday, first-year head coach Dave Canales announced that Andy Dalton would be taking over the Panthers’ starting quarterback job—at least for the time being. Canales claims that Young is still the team’s quarterback (just not the starting one) and that he has a future in Carolina. But what that future is remains to be seen. Young will now be parked on the bench for at least the near future, with his development taking place behind the scenes. Maybe that will change things for the no. 1 pick, allowing him to work through his mistakes without affecting the team’s on-field performance or developing bad habits—while not getting ridiculed on social media. But it’s worth asking whether any of this is even salvageable. Whether Young is a quarterback worth fighting for. And if not, where do the Panthers, who gave up so much to get him, go from here?
The one perk of rooting for a team owned by David Tepper is that you never have to wait too long for him to make up his mind. Impatience has been somewhat of a theme for Tepper since he bought the Panthers in 2018, leading to multiple coaching changes, quick-trigger hires, and even the decision to trade for Young in the first place. Back in 2019, when Tepper was looking for a new coach, he extended Matt Rhule an offer the day of their interview, picking him before the front office had conducted all of its scheduled meetings with other candidates. Tepper laid out his vision for a five-year plan under Rhule that would turn Carolina into a perennial winner. Then the coach was fired midway through his third season. Rhule should consider himself a bit lucky, as his successor, Frank Reich, lasted only 11 games before Tepper canned him.
That impatience isn’t necessarily a bad thing—some NFL teams will hold on to coaches and general managers after they’ve lost their fastball, either out of fear of change or the prospect of getting stuck with something worse. And Tepper is certainly not a man who’ll wait around for things to work themselves out. But that thinking can also do more harm than good when you’re running an NFL franchise and trying to skip over some necessary steps on the road to building a contender. Enter the trade for Young.
Before the Panthers struck their deal with Chicago, they had another trade in place that would have moved them up to the no. 2 pick, as opposed to the first. As Tepper explained last November, it was a three-team trade that also included Houston. The Texans would get Chicago’s no. 1 pick, Carolina would get the second pick, and Chicago would drop down to the ninth pick, where the Panthers were originally slated to draft.
Tepper said the terms of the potential deal were sorted out, but he grew impatient as the Texans took their time finalizing it. “We waited, and you have to appreciate [that] I come from a world where you do trades, and I don’t love when trades don’t happen right away. So I’m driving [GM] Scott [Fitterer] crazy. I’m saying, ‘What’s going on with these guys? This doesn’t feel right.’”
After mulling over the trade, Houston changed its mind and backed out. Less than 24 hours later, it was announced that Chicago would be trading the pick to Carolina for the no. 9 pick in that year’s draft, the Panthers’ 2024 first-rounder, two second-rounders, and Moore, who was the team’s best player at the time. It was a monumental decision, and it was made in less time than it takes to verify a YouTube account.
As Reich later explained to the team’s website, it was impatience that inspired the idea to trade up in the draft in the first place. The Panthers hadn’t made the playoffs since 2017, and the franchise saw quarterback play as the primary cause of the drought. “We’ve not won a bunch of games in the last few years,” Reich said. “So how many years can you go? Can you keep putting off this thing to take your shot and get your guy?”
The Panthers quickly became convinced that Young was their guy. The team did its due diligence during the predraft evaluation process. They were enamored of Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, who has since blossomed into a star in Houston. They were intrigued by the physical abilities of Florida’s Anthony Richardson, which have Colts fans dreaming of a bright future. But Young was always their guy—and according to this account of the predraft process, that was an opinion held by Tepper, Fitterer, and Reich. The owner, GM, and head coach were all aligned. Fitterer said his final conversation with Reich before the decision was made lasted “five seconds.”
And once they selected Young, the Panthers didn’t waste any time anointing him. Young was named the team’s starter after just one training camp practice, “beating out” Dalton for the starting job before the pads even came on. Knowing what we do now about Young and the state of his game, it’s hard to believe there was ever a legitimate competition for the starting job. Just like the predraft process, Young was always going to be their guy, even if they had to cut a few corners to make sure the public saw it that way too.
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It remains to be seen whether Young is still their guy after he was the latest victim of Tepper’s quick hook, but it’s hard to believe that he has a future with the team after what we’ve seen from him on the field. The numbers are staggeringly bad: 37 quarterbacks have attempted at least 200 passes since the start of the 2023 season, per TruMedia. Young ranks 37th in total expected points added, yards per dropback, and completion percentage. He ranks 36th in EPA per dropback and success rate, with only Bailey Zappe behind him in both metrics.
We’re just 18 games into Young’s career, but that’s a big enough sample to make some larger determinations about his play. Only two quarterbacks taken in the first round since 2000 have been worse than Young in EPA through two seasons: Akili Smith and Josh Rosen. Neither was able to turn around his career, even after a change of scenery. And the players directly under Young on the list don’t offer any hope, either. It’s a rogues’ gallery of the biggest QB busts in recent memory: Blaine Gabbert, Zach Wilson, Cade McNown, and Joey Harrington.
Worst First-Round QBs Through Two Seasons, by EPA
Alex Smith is the one quarterback who was able to flip a switch, but his breakout didn’t come until his sixth NFL season, in 2011, and that happened while he was surrounded by one of the most talented rosters in the league. He was also benched for Colin Kaepernick the following season, so that’s not exactly a dream outcome, either.
Maybe Young just needs time off the field to develop better habits—or maybe he needs to get out of Carolina altogether. The supporting cast the Panthers provided him with in 2023 was downright bad, and this season hasn’t been any better. But still, there’s very little evidence that Young hasn’t been the team’s biggest issue. He doesn’t perform well in accuracy measures, his numbers on unpressured dropbacks are horrid, and, well, it’s time we talk about the (tiny) elephant in the room: his size.
At 5-foot-10 and 205 pounds (wink), Young is one of the smallest quarterbacks ever taken in the first round. We’ve seen quarterbacks of a similar stature selected highly, and we’ve seen a few others play like first-round talents once they made it to the NFL, but we’ve never seen one succeed who has both a small frame and no standout physical traits. Kyler Murray is 5-foot-9 on his best day, but he has exceptional speed and arm strength. Russell Wilson won a Super Bowl and made a bunch of Pro Bowls in Seattle, but he’s also one of the most elusive quarterbacks the league has ever seen, with an uncanny ability to throw on the run. Drew Brees may have been 6 feet, but he commanded the pocket as if he were Josh Allen’s height. I’m still not sure how he pulled that off.
Young is quick, but he’s not exceptionally fast. His arm is fine, but not particularly strong—especially with big pass rushers in his face. And his first instinct is to back out of the pocket rather than step up into it like the best quarterbacks do. Whether he’s been inside the pocket or outside it, Young has performed poorly.
It’s difficult to find any statistical split that suggests there is something in Young’s game to build an offense around. He’s been bad in shotgun formations and even worse when playing under center. He’s been inaccurate when throwing to the deep parts of the field or throwing it underneath. The one play type where he seems to succeed—and this is relative to his own baseline performance, not the league average—is designed rollouts off play-action. He’s averaging 0.32 EPA per dropback on those plays, compared to his minus-0.24 EPA average on all plays. That makes sense for a quarterback who has issues seeing the field and throwing over the offensive line. Outside the pocket, he gets a clearer view and a cleaner platform to throw from.
The problem is that those plays can be called only in certain situations: on early downs when the defense has to respect the run. Running a play-action pass on second- or third-and-long will not have the desired effect on the defense. The other issue is that Young has been quite bad on his other dropbacks from under center. On play-action passes that keep him inside the pocket, he’s hemorrhaging minus-1.65 EPA per play, according to TruMedia. He has yet to attempt a pass without play-action from under center, so you can see how playing into this one particular strength could silo the offense.
Reich and Canales deserve some blame for the lack of development we’ve seen from Young, but there’s not much a play caller can do to work around his deficiencies. Even Young, who’s been an undersized quarterback throughout his football career, seems to be running out of answers about how to overcome his size at this level. On Sunday against the Chargers, he started jumping just to get off short throws over the line.
Per Sports Info Solutions, Young had never attempted a jump pass before the game against Los Angeles, suggesting that those were the result of desperation to find something that worked. His last throw of the game—which would turn out to be the last throw before his benching—was a jump throw on fourth-and-3 late in the loss. Despite Young’s extra effort to get the throw over the line, Chargers defensive tackle Scott Matlock, who also starts at fullback, batted it down without jumping himself. It was a play that made it abundantly clear that this wasn’t a viable situation for the offense, and that a change needed to be made if the Panthers were going to get a fair evaluation of the other 52 players on the roster.
That’s what makes it so hard to figure out where Carolina could possibly go from here, or what the team needs to clean up a mess that’s been created by an impatient owner and a bad gamble on the wrong prospect. A replacement-level starter like Dalton should allow a proper evaluation to take place over the next 15 games. By then, we’ll have a better idea of how far away this team is from playing competitive football and whether Young has a future as a starter in this league.
Moving on from Young wouldn’t be too much of a hassle for Carolina. Rookie deals are fully guaranteed but relatively cheap. The Panthers would be stuck with a $22 million dead cap charge, spread over the next two years, if they traded him in the offseason. For a team with plenty of cap space (due to their negligence and not having players worth re-signing), that’s a drop in the bucket. Carolina owns its first-round pick in 2025 and a second-round pick that it got from the Rams, so the team will have a full slate of picks in the upcoming draft. That said, the incoming quarterback class, led by Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Georgia’s Carson Beck, isn’t off to a strong start this season, so Carolina shouldn’t be in a rush to use its top pick on another quarterback unless a slam-dunk prospect emerges in the next few months.
Instead, the Panthers, and Tepper, should learn from the teams they were negotiating with in the run-up to the 2023 draft and practice some patience. That led Houston to Stroud, and the following year Chicago ended up with a generational prospect in Caleb Williams, all at Carolina’s expense. The Panthers are a few years away from contention, so trading back, collecting draft capital, and waiting for the right quarterback—preferably one who isn’t a historical outlier for all the wrong reasons—seems like the obvious path forward. Whether that fits with Tepper’s timeline is another issue.
