Bryce Young questions loom: Should Panthers have picked Stroud? Should Dalton start?
When you’re an 0-4 NFL team, things get dicey. Fans and reporters begin to question everything. The players, coaches and front office all get antsy.
Such is life right now for the Carolina Panthers, who have lost their first four games under new head coach Frank Reich. Three of those four have been the first three NFL starts for rookie quarterback Bryce Young, and his numbers have been thoroughly unimpressive.
This leads to the two questions I get asked most by Carolina fans who are watching the Panthers flounder their way to a sixth straight losing season and are, understandably, unhappy about it.
1. Should the Panthers have chosen C.J. Stroud instead of Young with the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NFL Draft?
2. Should Andy Dalton be starting right now instead of Young?
Let’s examine each of these questions, trying to stay out of hot-take territory and looking at the facts.
C.J. Stroud over Young at No. 1?
Young and Stroud are friends. I witnessed this personally while covering the NFL Draft in Kansas City in April, where the two gravitated toward each other multiple times during community and media events. The Panthers considered both, with Stroud possessing much more of the prototypical QB build and Young possessing an elite analytical mind. They are both big-time athletes. Carolina ended up picking Young, and Houston happily chose Stroud at No. 2.
Stroud’s start has been far stronger than Young’s. Stroud was the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Month in September and has six touchdown passes and zero interceptions so far, along with two 300-yard passing games and a 100.6 QB rating. Houston is 2-2.
In one fewer game, Young has two TD passes and two interceptions and zero 300-yard passing games with a 75.0 QB rating. Carolina is 0-4.
Young has been rooting for Stroud to play well, he said Wednesday.
“It’s been really fun just to watch him as a fan of his game,” Young said. “Being able to watch him have success means a lot. I’m close to him and he’s a great person on and off the field. So it’s been really cool to watch him have the success he’s had.”
Does that motivate Young to want to have his own success, so he’ll have something to talk about to the next time the two young quarterbacks communicate?
“I’m big on kind of running my own race,” Young said.
Fair enough.
But so far, this is a race Stroud is undeniably winning, and the Panthers must consider the possibility they have chosen the wrong guy. Not that they could do much about it at this point.
There was talk about Stroud not being “smart enough” for the NFL, based on a leaked score of a cognition test called the S2 that NFL Draft prospects take. Stroud responded to that report at a draft event I covered in April, and my original tweet of his answer ended up being viewed more than 2.8 million times.
Said Stroud: “I’m not a test taker. I play football. ... If you don’t trust and believe in me, all I can tell you is ‘Watch this.’”
It was a confident answer, and Stroud has been playing very confidently. It’s been “Watch this” indeed. Young, meanwhile, has only led the Panthers to two offensive touchdowns in his three games as a starter.
But I will also say this: If you think of Stroud and Young’s NFL careers as a 26.2-mile marathon, they are about at the one-mile mark right now.
Stroud has the lead, but they’ve got 25.2 miles to go. To say for absolute sure that Stroud is better than Young based on one month of one season is shortsighted. The answer to question one may not be what you want to hear, but it’s the truth:
It’s too early to tell.
Should Andy Dalton be starting?
If the Panthers were playing one game right now and the future of the world was at stake, do you know who I’d put in at QB for that game?
Andy Dalton.
The Carolina offense ran more smoothly and had far more big plays in Dalton’s one game this season, when he threw for 361 yards on a career-high 58 attempts in a 37-27 loss at Seattle. The 27 points represented almost exactly twice as many as the team is averaging with Young in the rookie’s three games as a starter.
But the Panthers aren’t faced with an “all-or-nothing” type of game. Instead, they have a 22-year-old starting QB and a 35-year-old backup, and the 22-year-old is the future.
If Carolina started Dalton for the rest of the season, the Panthers might go 7-10 or 6-11. At best. If they start Young, they’ll probably end up somewhere around 5-12 or 4-13.
Does that improvement matter? Sure, but not as much as it matters that the Panthers figure out what they have in Young. He has to be good for Carolina to succeed. There’s just no way around it.
So the answer to the second question is no. Dalton shouldn’t be starting.
“This is Bryce’s thing,” as Dalton said earlier this year. And it is, unless Young gets hurt again, which is a subject for another day.
Or, to put it another way, as Reich said Wednesday: “You have to have the maturity to feel the urgency and the demand to win right now. And you have to balance that with the perspective of the big picture, and sometimes it takes time.”
And, as Reich would continue later: “Really, I just think this is all normal. I mean, it’s terrible that we’re 0-4. It’s terrible that we haven’t had more success on offense. ... But I really believe and know that that’s coming. And there will be stuff that we gain and that he gains as an offense and as a team going through this difficulty.”
One can only hope that’s true. Bryce Young and the offense need to have a big Sunday soon, because what’s going on now is just depressing. Also: On Oct. 29, Houston comes to Carolina. Panthers fans will see Stroud and Young face off up close there, and decide in real time whether they have a case of buyer’s remorse.
This story was originally published October 5, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
