Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young produced an absolute dud in this past Sunday’s 26-3 home loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. It resulted in the 0-2 Panthers benching the first pick of the 2023 NFL Draft ahead of Carolina’s matchup at the 1-1 Las Vegas Raiders this Sunday.
For an article published on Tuesday, NFL insider Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated touched upon Young’s awful Week 2 outing.
“After talking to the Los Angeles Chargers’ staff about game-planning and working against Young on Sunday,” Breer wrote, “I got a little window into how Carolina got here. The Chargers staff saw a quarterback who’d stopped looking downfield, struggled to see the field from the pocket and kept dropping his eyes and looking at the rush — the sign of a player who’s taken too many hits and doesn’t want to take any more.”
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In total, Young completed 18-of-26 passes for a paltry 84 yards with no touchdowns and an interception against the Chargers. That defeat dropped his overall record as an NFL starter to 2-16 and cemented his status as the league’s worst signal-caller, statistically speaking, of the season’s first two weeks.
According to ESPN stats, Young began Tuesday ranked last in the NFL among qualified players with a 9.1 adjusted QBR and a 44.1 passer rating for the ongoing campaign. He’s 31st out of 32 quarterbacks with an average of 4.4 yards gained per pass attempt, and he tossed zero touchdown passes to go along with three interceptions over his two starts.
ESPN Panthers reporter David Newton insisted on Tuesday that Young hadn’t yet “lost the locker room” despite the signal-caller’s poor play. Breer suggested first-year head coach Dave Canales had to make a major move to prevent teammates from possibly turning on Young as soon as this coming weekend.
“Veteran players in any locker room, not just Carolina’s, are generally uninterested in your three-year plan,” Breer continued. “They want to know what’s going to help them win, achieve individual success and, ultimately, get paid. If you keep playing a guy who’s keeping that from happening, it can be a problem. And that’s where it might be tough, given the anemic production and obvious problems, to sell Young to the locker room.”
Panthers beat writer Joseph Person of The Athletic previously hinted that “the mood around the locker room in the stadium” this past Sunday impacted Canales’ call to bench Young and play veteran Andy Dalton against the Raiders. While things often change quickly in the NFL, it certainly feels as if Young has taken his last meaningful snap with the Panthers for the foreseeable future.