With 2023 sunk, is a restart for Carolina Panthers rookie QB Bryce Young necessary?
Brian Burns was asked what he’d say to rookie quarterback Bryce Young in the wake of Carolina’s fifth straight loss — and the star pass rusher shrugged his shoulders.
“After this game,” Burns said, “ain’t much to say.”
The Carolina Panthers, who fell to the Detroit Lions 42-24 with few-and-far-between signs of life, are now 0-5 for the fourth time in franchise history. That includes the 2-14 2010 season, and it doesn’t include, depressingly enough, the 1-15 2001 season (where the Panthers won the first game and reeled off 15 straight losses thereafter).
Questions abound after losses, as those seasons attest, and they get more and more dire after each one. One that many might be asking at this point this year: Is it time for Young to take a back seat — temporarily — to veteran backup Andy Dalton?
Head coach Frank Reich told reporters postgame that “there was no point where I was considering any change” at quarterback. A lot of that likely is based on how Young played in the second half.
Young finished Sunday 25-of-41 for 247 yards and three touchdowns. That completion total matched his career high from a week ago, and that yardage total trounced his previous passing yard high of 204. He also, in the second half, found receivers on chunk plays and spread the wealth around like he did during his impressive first training camp.
All three of his touchdowns against the Lions were to different targets — the first to tight end Tommy Tremble, the second to DJ Chark, the third to Adam Thielen.
But his game was nonetheless defined by mistakes.
The two interceptions were supreme among them.
There was the first-quarter shovel screen pass for tight end Ian Thomas, which turned into an Aidan Hutchinson interception and set up a 20-yard touchdown drive for the Lions.
There was the second-quarter interception that seemed to deflate the defense for good. That one appeared to be a misread of Detroit’s defense: Young dropped back, looked only toward Jonathan Mingo’s side the whole way and lofted a pass into double coverage.
There were other, smaller mistakes, too. There were moments he held onto the ball too long. He almost suffered a safety when he was called for intentional grounding after chucking the ball to no-man’s-land while evading pressure near the goal line, several yards behind the line of scrimmage.
“Some of it is, you play the quarterback position and touch the ball every play and throw it enough times, you’re going to make some,” Reich said of Young’s many rookie mistakes. “Been too many. We’ve had too many turnovers; they’ve not all been on Bryce.”
Young has now thrown four interceptions and lost two fumbles in his four games started in the NFL. That hasn’t happened a lot for the former Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 overall pick much throughout his football life.
The losing is new to him, too.
“Two throws, first one you wish you could just dirt on the screen and then the corner made a good play, but I have to do a better job of seeing that in Cover 2,” Young said. “Again, obviously stuff you wish you got back and it’s tough. You put your defense in a tough situation. They’re a really good team, really good on offense as well, so it’s not like they need any handouts. And then you already set them up so those are on me, and I have to do a better job eliminating those.”
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But Young’s lukewarm day doesn’t dilute the fact that the Panthers looked the most explosive in the one game where Dalton was behind center. With Young nursing an ankle injury, the 35-year-old NFL veteran threw a career-high 58 passes and notched two touchdowns en route to a 37-27 loss.
Reich stayed steadfast postgame that he can win with the players in the Ford Field visiting locker room, going so far as to invoke the franchise’s “Keep Pounding” mantra to drive the point home. He believes this, as aforementioned, with Young at the helm — indicating that this team, like the questions it’s asking itself, is playing less for the season and more for its future beyond.
Other questions about this game, this season, are relevant, no doubt:
▪ Should the Panthers have gone for it on their first drive of the game on the fourth-and-short on the favorable side of the field?
▪ Does the team trust Chuba Hubbard more than offseason signee Miles Sanders after Hubbard notched more carries than him a second consecutive week (Hubbard notched nine carries, Sanders had seven)?
▪ And why did Terrace Marshall, after notching a team-best nine receptions a week ago, not play on Sunday?
But those aren’t of the variety these Panthers are asking themselves now.
The only ones worth asking, at this point, are as existential as they come.
“Obviously we have to clean this stuff up and then we have to turn the page,” Young said. “We’re going to get back to work tomorrow, look at this stuff, see stuff we need to correct, see stuff we can build off of and no matter how bad anyone feels, how bad we all feel, we own it in the locker room.
“There’s nothing that can get us to get the game back, so all we can do is look toward next week.”
What else is there left to say?
This story was originally published October 9, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
