In Panthers’ loss to Patriots, Bryce Young needed to be more than turnover-free
No fumbles for defensive touchdowns. No drive-ending, momentum-stunting, scratch-your-head interceptions. No spiked iPads or fiery exchanges with his head coach.
None of this from Bryce Young.
Instead, there was a deep shot on fourth-and-5 to rookie receiver Tetairoa McMillan that never had a chance. There were handoffs on third-and-longs. There were moments when pass protections broke down, and Young, instead of dazzling like he so often did in college and in spurts as a pro, answered to the pressure by dirting the ball away from harm. There were surrenders.
Young played his second turnover-free game of football of 2025, something his head coach and playcaller Dave Canales has publicly pleaded for, and something that last week’s 30-0 win seemed to validate: Play mistake-free football, and this is what we can be.
But for the first time this year — as was determined before the Carolina Panthers trudged off the field 1-3 wearing their 42-13 loss to the New England Patriots — turnover-free football wasn’t enough.
Young needed to be more.
And he wasn’t.
He admitted as much postgame.
“It’s on me,” Young said. “It’s on everybody in that locker room. We talked about that after. We all take accountability. We all have to look in the mirror. We all have to understand what we can do better. It’s definitely not on one person. It’s all of us that have to be better.”
He elaborated: “Missed some stuff. I take accountability for that. It’s on me. Missing my opportunities. We’ll watch film, and I’ll be better and we’ll all be better.”
Young finished Sunday 18-of-30 for 150 yards and one touchdown. He was sacked once for 11 yards and ended his day with an 84 passer rating. He’s now 1-15 for his career on the road. That’s the worst through 16 road contests since Dan Pastorini reached that mark with the Houston Oilers from 1971-73.
The third-year quarterback and overall No. 1 pick of the 2023 draft is 7-26 in the NFL. And if you dove into the nitty gritty details, you could explain so much of those numbers away.
You could lump his rookie season in with the rest of the tumult that came in 2023: a fired head coach in the middle of the season, a fired general manager after that. You could hear-out the believers when you took Young’s Year 2 in full; he was benched after merely two games with a new head coach and playcaller, and once he returned as the starter, he was good, then great, then, in the team’s 2024 finale, an agent of hope and swagger and Cam Newton-ness.
Even through three contests in 2025, he wasn’t great, but his performances were justifiable. Turnovers were a problem against the Jaguars — two interceptions and one fumble — but outside of those mistakes, he had a decent passer rating and was accurate and had some receivers struggle. Against the Cardinals he notched career highs in completions and attempts and passing yards en route to a comeback that fell one drive short of ranking among the best in NFL history. Against the Falcons, he didn’t have to be great — his defense wreaked havoc and even scored for him; his special teams were close-to perfect — so being turnover-free could yield a win.
That’s what made Sunday, against a vulnerable Patriots pass defense, different. Young needed to be more than turnover-free. He needed to be special.
It’s true that there were flashes of that, no doubt. Take the game’s first drive. He threw for 48 yards capped off by a 7-yard toss to tight end Tommy Tremble in the back of the end zone. Young began the game completing his first six passes.
And it’s true, too, that the fact that the Panthers didn’t score any more Young-led points didn’t merely fall on him. The Panthers were awfully thin at receiver come the game’s end. Veteran wideout David Moore, who played in 96.6% of the snaps in Week 3, sustained an elbow injury that ended his day after the first play, a 12-yard run jet sweep. McMillan had a pass on target run right through his hands. The Patriots are one of the best run defenses in the league, so establishing the run was never going to be an easy task. (That said, the Panthers notched 129 yards on the ground — the most by any Patriots opponent this season ... by a lot.)
In fact, if you ask Canales, he’ll put the loss squarely on his shoulders, calling himself the “common denominator” in the Panthers’ foibles across all three phases of the game, adding that such a loss was “not acceptable.”
Canales also said that Young would be the quarterback in Week 5 against the Miami Dolphins, despite backup quarterback Andy Dalton wrapping up the game with a touchdown drive.
“Absolutely,” Canales said when asked if Young was his quarterback. “Counting on him to keep pushing us forward, counting on him to keep us on track. There were some near misses across the board. Some penalties that put us in weird situations, a couple of protection issues, and one of them where he slipped, which kind of put us in a bad situation.
“But I still feel that he’s being confident out there. He’s leading the group. He’s getting us out there with good energy and focus. He’ll continue to play.”
Ask around the locker room, and similar answers crop up. Receiver Hunter Renfrow said that there were some positive things that the team could extract from Sunday. Left tackle Ickey Ekwonu was clearly down, but when asked about Young, he was complimentary.
“I feel like he did the best he could based on the looks we were giving him,” Ekwonu said. “Honestly, I could put a lot of that blame on the offensive line. Just not giving him enough time, not blocking things the right way, and stuff like that. But I think overall, Bryce played the best he could’ve played. I know he’s a competitor, so anytime the game’s not perfect, he’s going to be hard on himself, but like I said, I put a lot of that blame on the O-line today.”
There are kernels of truth in all this. But the prevailing truth that the Panthers found out is that there is a difference between mistake-free football and turnover-free football. Both require accuracy and sound decision-making, but the former not only leaves room for magic but requires it: of squeaking away from sacks, of giving your receivers the room and space to be special, of Steph Curry look-away passes and smiling after taking nasty hits — plays of which Young has proven capable of making.
But Sunday wasn’t that. Sunday was merely turnover-free — and, simply, not enough.
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
