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After last night’s loss, the Panthers are now 1-8 on the 2023 season, following a 16-13 loss to the Bears last night on Thursday Night Football. Bryce Young is now 1-7 as a starter, equaling the same number of losses he experienced in high school, and college combined. The rookie signal-caller has struggled to adjust to the NFL and has been hindered by an underperforming offensive line, and receivers that can’t get open.
Young has thrown for 1,560 yards, with 8 touchdowns, and 7 interceptions, with a 63%, while being sacked 29 times. He’s averaging throwing for less than 200 yards per game, and his average yard per completion is 5.4. Those numbers are well below the league average, forcing criticism to come upon Young, Frank Reich, and first-time play caller, Thomas Brown. To make matters worse, CJ Stroud continues to light up the league as a rookie in Houston, and even Will Levis has provided a spark to the Titans offense, ever since Ryan Tannehill got injured.
At 1-8, it’s fair to say that Carolina is out of the running to win the NFC South, let alone compete for a Wild Card spot in the NFC. This led the Wes & Walker Show to ask the question….should the Panthers sit Bryce Young for the rest of the 2023 season? We’ve seen over the years rookie QBS have their careers practically ruined during their rookie seasons, after being put into positions to fail more often than not. When you look at this version of the Panthers, that is exactly where Bryce Young finds himself, as every time he takes the field, he’s not being given a chance to win the game.
Walker led the charge, saying that it makes sense if Carolina were to go that way, and let Young learn from the veteran Andy Dalton. As for Wes Bryant, a former offensive lineman at Wake Forest, he sees the value in letting Bryce Young earn his stripes at the NFL level, after dominating virtually every level of football prior to this one.
The tough part about this question is that there is no right answer. Patrick Mahomes sat behind Alex Smith for one season in Kansas City, before turning into the best QB in football. Trevor Lawrence started immediately in Jacksonville, taking his lumps early on, before leading the Jaguars to the Divisional Round last year. When Carolina drafted Cam Newton overall back in 2011, they let him play right away, as he put together one of the best rookie seasons in NFL history for a QB, on his path to stardom.
The thing that separated Young from his counterparts in the draft process, was his ability to process information, allowing him to dissect defenses you don’t typically see from a college QB. That is why his struggles have caught everyone off guard, and make it easy to blame the situation, more so than him directly.
Young is smart enough to figure out a lot on his own, but he’s going to need his coaching staff, and his front office to help put him in the best position possible to display the reasons why they traded up to #1 to draft earlier this year.
You can catch the Wes & Walker Show every weekday from 12-3 PM, on Sports Radio 92.7 WFNZ, and the WFNZ app.
Should the Panthers Sit Bryce Young? was originally published on wfnz.com
