Fall is here. Pumpkin spice is invading our lives. Halloween is around the corner. The Panthers are disappointing. It’s been a fall tradition year-in-year-out, but Sunday might have truly been the breaking point for Carolina. Whatever optimism was gained in a 30-0 thrashing of the Atlanta Falcons was washed away in minutes as the Panthers went to Foxboro and got dogwalked by the Patriots in a 42-13 beatdown that led to Bryce Young smashing his helmet on the sideline, eventually being benched again for Andy Dalton.
The lazy, incorrect answer is “he’s a bust.” The binary of success or failure doesn’t really apply here, because Carolina is such a mess of a football team that no one player could turn this around. Hell, you could put Josh Allen on this team and it’s unlikely the Panthers would have any more victories. Still, that doesn’t absolve Young of any responsibility, and it’s high time we talked about what is actually going wrong with this football team — and whether or not this is salvageable anymore.
The fundamental Bryce Young problem
No, it’s not size. While it might be fun to goof on the fact the Panthers drafted such a small quarterback, the real issue is that Bryce Young is the worst possible quarterback to land on a team lacking experienced receiver talent — and that has to do with how Young plays the quarterback position.
The fundamental unicorn trait that Bryce Young entered the NFL with was his anticipation. Watch his film from Alabama, or heck, even his rare Panthers highlights and you’ll see a quarterback with absolutely unreal timing and feel for where to throw the ball. The issue is that it takes two to tango, and in Carolina he landed on a team without the receivers to leverage this trait. This has had the effect where all of Young’s mistakes are magnified to the nth degree when a receiver screws up — which happens a lot. A botched anticipation throw appears on film like he’s throwing to a completely open part of the field with no receivers around the ball at all, at worst leading to easy interceptions.
Three years of the mish-mash Panthers receivers have ensured none of Young’s traits can be leveraged. Adam Thielen had the knowledge to run the routes Young needed, but he was too old to have the speed to create big plays. Xavier Legette, whom the Panther drafted in 2023, not only has mammoth drop problems — but he’s not a route technician. He’s best running fairly rudimentary routes and using his athleticism to win.
The only player who appears to have a requisite blend of the athleticism and know-how required to work with Young is Tetairoa McMillan, and that’s even been taken away as opposing defenses have come to realize there aren’t any other threats requiring attention.
As a result the Panthers have simplified their passing game with far more pitch-and-catch plays, where Young is resigned to throwing to an already open man — rather than throw into space with the expectation a receiver will be there. What we’re witnessing is a distillation of what happens when you remove a QB’s best trait. Without that edge to his game Young becomes an extremely mediocre quarterback — a player who brings nothing to the table over Andy Dalton.
The only possible correction to this is giving Young more autonomy at the line of scrimmage. As it stands there aren’t many times in which Young audibles out of plays or changes concepts at the LoS. It’s unclear if this is because he’s not comfortable doing it, or if the coaching staff isn’t willing to give him the rope to try — but whatever is coming down from the booth isn’t working.
There’s no trust on this offense
Losing does weird things to football teams, but the most damaging is fostering a culture of mistrust throughout the organization — and that’s what the Panthers are going through. They can stand at the podium post-game and say whatever they want about team unity and getting better, but the games speak for themselves.
Whether a product of the protection, receivers, or Young himself — the Panthers coaching staff refuses to call plays with verticality. Young’s intended air yards in 2025 are an atrocious 6.5, which has manifested itself as a career-low 5.2 yards-per-attempt. The league-average in 2025 is 6.9, with only Joe Flacco and Cam Ward having fewer yards-per-attempt among starters than Bryce Young.
It’s not a situation where Young can’t, it’s just that the team won’t. It’s likely the simplifying of the passing game to account for their lack of WR talent outside of McMillan has manifested itself as a series of boring, obvious throws without any wrinkles. There are simply no explosive plays coming from the Panthers, and winning the “explosives” battle is something head coach Dave Canales has said he believes is crucial to winning in the modern NFL.
We then shrink down to Bryce Young and it’s apparent he doesn’t have much trust in the personnel around him. The only guy he’s willing to throw contested passes to is McMillan, and it’s not entirely his fault when nobody can be counted on to make a catch while open — let alone in a 50/50 ball situation where it could result in a turnover.
This could improve when Jalen Coker is available one more, but that’s more of a hope than a plan.
What do the analytics say?
This is a bit of a mixed bag, but all-in-all, Bryce Young has not been terrible at his job this year. It’s just everything around him in the passing game is a mess. The aforementioned air yards and yards-per-attempt are a product of coaching and receiving, but with what Young can control it hasn’t been that bad.
- Young’s 42.7% passing play success rate is better than Bo Nix (42.1%), Jalen Hurts (41.8%), Caleb Williams (41-6%), or Baker Mayfield (40.8%)
- His 19.6% bad throw rating is better than numerous QBs, including Michael Penix (24%) and Russell Wilson (20.8%)
- Bryce’s 75.4% on-target throw percentage is 2nd in the NFL among starters, and only slightly behind the No.1 QB in the NFL — Josh Allen (76.9%)
It’s that last stat that really pops off the screen. This shows that the receivers and protection in Carolina are so bad that it’s lead to a -15.4% completion percentage delta due to drops and throwaways. Compare this to Matthew Stafford, who only had 50.4% of his passes on target this season, but a total completion percentage of 67.6% due to his receivers being able to catch off-target passes, for a delta for +17.2%.
So what’s the final verdict?
This is a wrong place, wrong time situation for Bryce Young. There is very little evidence that he’s truly a bad QB, but he is a horrible QB when playing for a team with the myriad blocking and receiving issues that the Panthers have right now.
Trading Adam Thielen was a massive mistake, but requires hindsight. The team didn’t know at the time that they would be a quarter of the way into the season without Jalen Coker due to injury — who got hurt right after the team made the trade. That said, they should have been aware of how bad the receiving corps was going to be outside of Tetairoa McMillan.
The question now becomes whether or not Young can handle all the bullshit around him right now. It’s clear he’s losing his cool and the offense isn’t producing. Carolina isn’t built to play from behind because of their lack of weapons, and that’s a huge problem when the team is giving up explosive plays on defense.
It’s bizarre to say that Young is being “wasted” when his raw stats aren’t that good, but he’s being wasted. If this quarterback was on a team with veteran receivers or those with the talent to get open he would absolutely cook. Instead he’s a square peg being forced into a round hole, and all we’re left with are splinters.
Bryce Young isn’t a bust — the Panthers are.