Bryce Young has earned respect for his unexpected comeback
The 2024 NFL regular season is in the books and the Carolina Panthers are finally off their weird, risky roller coaster with a surprisingly strong sense of who they are. This season went off the rails almost from the jump. The whole year was set up as an evaluation period for Bryce Young, but his start was so atrocious that he was benched after just the second game of the season. Dave Canales’ first season as a head coach in the league did not promise much fun for fans—let along success for the team.
We all saw what happened next: a brief rally behind Andy Dalton; more sustained mediocrity; a car crash; and Young’s return.
By the time Young came back into the starting lineup in Week 8 loss against the Denver Broncos, most fans had written him off. He was a bust of a first overall pick and the face of one of the worst trades of all time. Now, Young has been announced as the Panthers’ quarterback for 2025 after mostly positive to relatively incredible performances in the final nine games of the season. Only the Broncos and Dallas Cowboys games had fans thinking that Young might be the same quarterback we saw during his rookie year.
Young’s return featured new levels of accuracy, daring, and vision while throwing the football, underlined by trust in and leadership of his teammates in a way that we hadn’t seen from him in the NFL. The name “Bama Bryce” trended for a reason.
All of that was visible yesterday in the team’s impressive win over the Atlanta Falcons. Young threw for 251 yards, zero turnovers, and accounted for five total touchdowns in thatr game en route to the Panthers putting up 44 points. It was a season finale to give fans hope and joy heading into the long offseason. For the record, that is more points than the team has scored in one game since November 13th, 2017 when Cam Newton threw for 254 yards and four touchdowns in a 45-21 victory over the Miami Dolphins.
That is particularly poignant because 2017 was the end of an era where Panthers fans could rest assured after a season that they knew who their quarterback and head coach were going to be the following season. Newton’s injury issues in 2017 were the beginning of the end for his career. The Panthers have been hunting for a leader and a play maker at the quarterback position ever since. Canales thinks that Young is that player.
Yeah, but. . .
Everything I just said is true, it is also way too sunshine and roses to mesh with what Panthers fans have gone through over the past seven years and longer. We know this isn’t a storybook and we know that no level of success is guaranteed. Take it all with the largest grain of salt you can find. A salt boulder wouldn’t be out of order here.
The Panthers were going to enter this offseason with a choice no matter how well Young played. They could keep him and pray that he continued to develop. They could trade him and get some return on their investment. They could pursue an upgrade to Dalton and swallow their historically bad trade. Right now, the team is set on keeping Young and I think that is smart risk management.
Setting aside the promise Young has shown, he would be worth keeping next season having only flashed a fraction of his big time throw ability. That’s because everything they could do at quarterback is a gamble and keeping Young is at least a play that doesn’t cost the team anything.
Look at the story of the Falcons this season and Kirk Cousins. He was the best veteran quarterback to hit the market in some time and he ended up getting benched for a rookie late in the season. Name a Panthers mercenary that hasn’t happened to in the last five years. The market is poor and the odds worse than hoping consistency for Young pays off.
Drafting a new quarterback at 8th overall would be a similarly low percentage play. Even if Young had returned as dreadful as he had left and the Panthers had earned the first overall pick for the second season in a row, the crop of quarterbacks this year leaves a lot to be desired. Better to draft a blue chip player at another position of need this year and try again at what is supposed to be a stronger class of quarterbacks next season.
Grasping for the next option because of dissatisfaction has led the Panthers to where they are currently, while both of their most recent journeyman quarterbacks are leading their new teams to the playoffs. That is Sam Darnold with the Minnesota Vikings and Baker Mayfield with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, for those keeping score at home.
Of course, sticking with Young is also a gamble. Nothing is guaranteed about his level of play from the end of this season continuing on to next. His track record through one and a half seasons as a starter is decidedly mixed when taken as a whole. That’s the gamble. One that costs nothing in terms of current or future resources.
Marking the quarterback position as ‘good’ also opens up the Panthers options this year to focus on the rest of their roster. Injuries across the board and throughout the season exposed a perilously thin roster and led directly to the team giving up the most points in a season in the history of the NFL. Young is at least better at quarterback than D.J. Johnson is at edge, Dane Jackson at corner, or Miles Sanders at running back. And those are the guys whose names we remember right now.
Obviously, I’m not outlining all of this to argue that the team should keep and continue to start Young. They have publicly decided as much already. I’m pointing all this out because keeping Young is the wise and patient move for a team that has been falling ass-over-tea-kettle for years, scrambling in their pursuit of the next quick fix. Just that shift in process—whether Young pans out or not—should be encouraging for fans who want next year to simply be the second step in a long road back to relevance.