Bryce Young takes brutal drop in NFL QB rankings after dud game

One step forward, two steps back. That seems to be the best the Carolina Panthers can manage in the post Cam Newton era.

The pattern played out again this past week, with a humiliating defeat to the New Orleans Saints - who had the worst record in the NFC - following a stunning upset win over the Green Bay Packers, who had the conference's best record at the time.

There are a lot of reasons why this keeps happening - but at the top it's more of the same - simple poor play at quarterback. That's where Bryce Young has regressed to the rookie version of his game, seemingly forgetting all the progress he made in the second half of the 2024 season.

Young's dud of a Week 10 performance against the Sants has led to a big drop in the latest NFL quarterback rankings from CBS Sports. Young is now ranked No. 28, down from No. 23 last week.

Bryce Young ranked 28th at QB

"No one should ever doubt his determination to translate college-level composure to the NFL stage, but we're two and a half years in, and Young still looks overmatched when it comes to throwing the rock."

At this point "overmatched" may be too kind of a descriptor for Young, who had an impressive second half against the Arizona Cardinals after two ugly turnovers to begin the game - but otherwise has only had one strong game all season - coming against the atrocious Dallas Cowboys defense.

Even then Young still finished with under 200 passing yards, something that's happened in all but one game the entire year.

Context is king when evaluating QB play - and in that regard the Panthers are letting him down almost across the board. He has a good run game to lean on now with Rico Dowdle, but only one reliable wide receiver, poor pass protection and awful playcalling from head coach Dave Canales outside of opening drives.

Even with all that supporting cast evidence Young's performance just hasn't been good enough. At a certain point a quarterback has to elevate the players around him - especially when he's a former No. 1 overall pick. Right now Young doesn't seem capable of that, despite the remarkable potential he showed at the end of last season.

It's not difficult to squint and see Bryce Young succeeding with a brilliant playcaller like Kyle Shanahan or Sean McVay - but they don't grow coaches like that on trees - and none of them are going to be interested in taking Carolina's head coach job until the organization proves it can do much better than they have since 2018.

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