It’s Week 1 and palms are already hovering over the panic button in Carolina.
Quarterback Bryce Younger, the Panthers’ No. 1 total choose in 2023, completed Sunday’s humiliating 47-10 highway loss to the Saints with a passer ranking of 32.8, with The Charlotte Observer’s Scott Fowler pondering the way forward for the Heisman Trophy winner, who “seemed precisely the identical to start with of his second season as he did on the finish of his first. Overwhelmed. Undersized. Out of his factor.”
“The Panthers will give it each probability, after all, as a result of they’ve invested the No. 1 collection of the 2023 NFL Draft and a lot else in Younger. They’ve earmarked him as the man from the very first sport of his NFL profession, making him the starter and a group captain and entrusting a lot of their future to him. And he’s solely 23. There’s that. And he seemed good in coaching camp and in his one drive of the preseason. There’s that, too,” Fowler wrote in his column.
“However wishing Younger was the man and him really turning into the man are two very various things.”
In his first sport in rookie head coach Dave Canales‘ system, Younger went 13-for-30, throwing for 161 yards and two interceptions whereas dashing for a rating.
Veteran backup Andy Dalton relieved Younger within the remaining two minutes of the competition.
“In fact, you wish to come out and begin off on a excessive notice. That didn’t occur at this time, and you understand, that’s robust,” mentioned Younger, whose Panthers went 2-15 final yr.
“We’re going to put on that at this time. We’re going to be taught from it. We flip the movie on tomorrow however that doesn’t outline us. It’s clearly a protracted yr. And we’ve to assault it with urgency and be sure that we’re pressing about cleansing issues up and repair what we’ve bought to repair.”
That urgency was uneven on Younger’s half.
“Younger hesitated when guys had been open Sunday or threw it to them after they weren’t. He bought aggressive when he ought to have been cautious and bought cautious when he ought to have been aggressive,” Fowler wrote.
Canales, who helped rework Baker Mayfield into the Buccaneers’ $100 million man as Tampa Bay’s offensive coordinator final season, pressured the Panthers’ “lengthy journey” and never the rapid vacation spot.
“I knew that whether or not we began 4-0 or 0-4, no matter that’s. What I knew is that is going to take a very long time to change into us. You’ve identified me just a little bit now, however I simply can’t assist however know that you need to have adversity to change into who you’re going to be. For guys to tug collectively, to indicate their character the best way they did at this time in a very robust loss and name it what it’s,” Canales mentioned Sunday.
The subsequent cease on that “lengthy journey” for the Panthers is Sunday’s house opener in opposition to Jim Harbaugh’s Chargers.
