Analysis suggests it's now or never for Bryce Young in Carolina

Football is the ultimate team sport, so there are a lot of different factors you can point to for contributing to Bryce Young's struggles this season. His offensive line isn't protecting him as well as last year, his GM traded his best wide receiver, his head coach isn't being nearly aggressive enough and the run game has yet to really get going.

That's lot for any NFL quarterback to deal with, let alone one that needs a strong supporting cast in order to thrive like Young. However, this is still the ultimate results-oriented business, and whether it's fair or not Young has to start producing better numbers or he's going to get benched again.

Young has yet have a really impressive game this season - even in the 30-0 blowout of Atlanta he only managed 121 yards and didn't throw a single touchdown pass. Good news: a couple of very soft defenses are next on the schedule, so he'll have a chance to bust out. Then again, if Young doesn't blow up these next couple of weeks this experiment might be over, per Saad Yousuf at the Athletic.

"Carolina hasn’t exactly fostered the best environments for quarterbacks in recent years Just ask Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield, both of whom found success after leaving the Panthers. Maybe the same happens for Young, but it’s getting tougher in Year 3 to build a case for him. However, his next two weeks are against a bad Miami Dolphins defense and literally the worst defense in the NFL in the Cowboys. If Young doesn’t get right in these games, that might be it, at least in Carolina."

It might sound like a hasty decision given how well Young was playing at the end of last season, but in NFL time that run was about 20 years ago. Young needs to start balling now if he's going to hang onto his job as Carolina's QB1.

If he's not the guy, odds are the next one isn't currently on the roster. Andy Dalton might start a few games but he'll turn 38 later this month and can't be considered a long-term option no matter how well he might perform for a game or two, as he did last season before he regressed.

Hendon Hooker is a much more intriguing option, and if nothing else he has more arm power than either Dalton or Young. He really hasn't gotten a chance to show what he can do, though. In his two seasons in Detroit they only let him throw the ball nine times and his preseason work was far from a ringing endorsement of his potential.

If Young can't finish the 2025 season strong there's a good chance we'll be back to the drawing board again, trying to find the QB1 this team has been searching for since they cut Cam Newton, which is starting to look an awful lot like a franchise curse.

Jan 2, 2022; New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton (1) on the sidelines in the second quarter against the New Orleans Saints at the Caesars Superdome. | Chuck Cook-Imagn Images

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