Carolina Panthers head coach Frank Reich wants you to know that Bryce Young is his guy. He’s called the 21-year-old quarterback the best player from the 2023 NFL draft, he’s said his football IQ is comparable to Peyton Manning’s and gave his opening session of OTAs a perfect 10-on-10 rating.
But is it too early for this much praise? Well, one former NFL head coach thinks so.
Eric Mangini, most known from his days of heading the New York Jets and Cleveland Browns, recently spoke with Trey Wingo and The 33rd Team regarding the love fest. And although he understands and appreciates why Reich would wax poetic about Young, Mangini said it could be doing the rookie a bit of a disservice.
” . . . I think he’s in a situation where the expectations are so big, and the best thing that you can do for him is take some of that pressure off,” he stated. “Your job should be constantly resetting expectations—and to some degree, lowering expectations. This is a rookie quarterback who’s gonna go through a ton of struggles and the last thing you want is the whole fanbase and the whole world thinking, ‘Well, he was so great early. Why is he suddenly struggling now?'”
Panthers fans probably didn’t enjoy reading much of that. But Mangini does raise a fair point.
Young is already facing some extremely high expectations. Not only did the Panthers draft him atop the board, but they traded popular wideout DJ Moore and a handful of premium picks to get to that No. 1 overall spot.
If Young experiences early growing pains, would the faithful start questioning the organization? Would they feel like they’ve been bamboozled, hornswoggled and/or hoodwinked?
Meh. We’re confident that the vast majority of fans are quite reasonable. But perhaps now, just a week into “gym class,” isn’t the best time take anything too seriously.
