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Bryce Young would attribute his readiness for the moment at hand, in large part, to the programs he came up in as a young quarterback.
At that position, you aren’t going to do much better than playing your high school ball at Mater Dei in Orange County, Calif. (only five universities have produced more Heisman winners than the Monarchs have) and your college ball for Nick Saban at Alabama. But there was one aspect to it that the Panthers, in vetting Young back in the spring, had to look into.
“I was wondering, at the time,” Carolina coach Frank Reich says, “how many games he’s gone into where his team hasn’t been favored.”
It may sound like little more than a good line—and it is one—but there is something to it.
And that something would be important to the Panthers, and still is, as they set the course for Young’s first season, with the No. 1 pick now entrenched as their starter.
Life in the NFL for a rookie quarterback isn’t easy. Usually, the high picks wind up on rebuilding teams, or with first-year coaches, or both, and that only adds to the challenge of making the leap in competition. That means that the player in question doesn’t just have to be talented, but he also has to be physically, mentally and emotionally tough to withstand the normal highs and lows that are part of the normal road map in making the transition to the pros.
The Panthers, in doing their research, found that Young had those qualities in spades—which was not just important but also essential, because Reich and his incoming staff were always realistic about what their young quarterback’s first year, regardless of which one they took after trading up for the No. 1 pick, would look like.
“We just watched the tape, talked to the guy,” Reich says. “Mentally, emotionally, physically, he does everything you have to do to be elite at that position. I say all that, and you’re dependent on so many other things—it’s not going to come easy. It’s going to be an up-and-down journey, because it always is. It just is. Our expectations should be that. Anything above that would mean, not that it’s up and down, it would mean it’s just a little less rocky.
“There will no doubt be rocky times.”
Friday at least gave Young a window into that. He played two series against the Giants and finished 3-of-6 for 34 yards. He was sacked. He got hit a bunch. He hung in there. There was some good and a bunch of bad, and Young kept swinging, proving, again, the Panthers right in how he was handling not being on a team that had 90% of its games won the minute it got off the bus.
So that’s where it’d be easy to say in doing so, he earned the respect of his teammates. But he’s already done that. And done it mostly, to this point, with how he’s carried himself.
“It’s just his demeanor,” left tackle Ickey Ekwonu says. Veteran receiver Adam Thielen echoes that, adding, “It’s kind of a combination of his demeanor, his confidence, his humbleness, and then making plays on the field.”
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“Everybody sees how mature he is,” says veteran pass rusher Justin Houston, who just got to Carolina. “A lot of guys that I see, when you’re a quarterback, it takes a year where they get embarrassed to understand this isn’t college. You got to go put that work in. With him, you see that already. He understands. He’s the first guy in the building and the last one to leave. That’s hard to find as a guy that’s just got in the league and hasn’t played a true snap yet. He understands at a high level what it’s going to take.”
Of course, he had to prove he could play, too, and that also happened fast.
There was a play in training camp, earlier in the month, on which the pocket closed around the diminutive Young. He felt the rush, stepped up, kept his eyes down the field, went through his progressions and unloaded the ball. At his release point, the receiver, on the far sideline, was still a step and a half from going into his break. When he turned, the ball was there, and the throw, and in particular the anticipation exhibited on it, drew an audible response from the coaching staff.
He had a couple of nice moments against the Giants, too.
On his third throw, Reich called an RPO. Young put the ball in running back Chuba Hubbard’s belly, pulled it and, with Kayvon Thibodeaux and a blitzing Xavier McKinney in his face, delivered a dart to fellow rookie Jonathan Mingo, who caught the ball, bounced off a defender and went for 15 yards. Three plays later, on his second third down, this one a third-and-6, he put the ball in a spot where only Thielen, running to the sideline, could get it to pick up the first down.
And sure, both plays were small moments, but each showed the command he’s exhibited in camp, command that has the players harboring the same sort of high hopes for their quarterback that the front office and coaching staff have.
“It’s his ability to kind of feel for the game,” Thielen says. “A lot of times, it takes time to get that feel. For him, it seemed to come pretty natural. … It’s the timing mixed with feel and comfort, and being able to make the defense do what you want them to do, but still do it in timing. A lot of times, guys, they want to do that, so they do all those things, then they’re late because they’re trying to do too much. There’s a lot more feel to it. … You start seeing things with him, you’re like, O.K., that’s different in a good way.”
Along those lines, Young’s already showing command at the line and setting protections, and that part’s been pretty spotless, too.
“He’s been on the money when it comes to that sort of stuff,” says Ekwonu. “I don’t think he’s made one mistake yet when it comes to finding the blitz. Defenses do a pretty good job of scouting that stuff, and he kind of reads right through it. Definitely impressive.”
All of it, too, is what his defensive teammates see in practice.
“How smooth he is in the pocket, I’m telling you, he’s smooth,” Houston says. “He moves like a vet. It’s crazy. Most quarterbacks, they see you, they go one read, and they take off running. They’re young, and everything is fast on them. With him, it’s like, I’ve been here before. He got a confidence and a poise about himself like, I’ve been here. I’ve done that. I think it’s come from his preparation. That gives you a whole lot of confidence when you put in that much work. That’s real confidence. That’s why he’s quiet. He doesn’t have to say much.”
And this is the part where you have to be reminded, again, that Young’s passer rating the other night was 68.1.
There was a play in the Panthers’ preseason opener against the Jets where the New York coaches thought their pass rush had broken Young’s collarbone.
Instead, the rookie bounced right off the turf, impressing his opponents, and returned to the huddle, just like how he responded against the Giants to a game-opening three-and-out with a 15-play, 62-yard drive that required consistency from the quarterback, and ended with a 37-yard field goal.
These are small steps, of course. But they’re important, and necessary, ones.
“It’s not going to be a straight line up,” says Reich. “He has to go through some really low lows, because it’s going to help propel him to new highs. If you don’t ever go through the really hard times, if you have upside, which he does, and a high ceiling, going through the low lows only makes the ceiling that much higher, in my opinion. That’s if you’re made of the right stuff. He’s made of the right stuff. There’s gonna be some tough moments. There’s going to be some bad games. I hope there’s not, but if there’s none, he’d be the first ever.
“We’ll have some tough losses. Those are going to be important in how we respond to those, in how he responds as a player and how he responds as a leader.”
And yet, already, Young’s leaving little doubt, to those around him, about just how those will go.
