Carolina Panthers head coach Dave Canales may be a well-noted optimist, but he’s not going to sugarcoat anything.
The 42-year-old spoke with reporters following his very first Fan Fest outing on Thursday night, where quarterback Bryce Young faced quite a bit of pressure during the team’s scrimmage. He was asked how he thought Young handled the heat.
“Bryce did a great job of getting rid of it,” Canales said. “Some smart decisions. He managed a couple of kinda crazy plays out there. And I thought he did a good job of that. I think a couple of them—dead in the water. Sometimes you get sacked, take care of the ball. We’ll live with that play. We’ll try and see if we can get half back and punt and flip the field and trust that we can play good team football.”
Don’t ring those alarms just yet, Panthers fans. While Young did have to deal with consistent pressure, something he saw way too much of during his rookie campaign, the offensive line was without two of their starters in left guard Damien Lewis and right tackle Taylor Moton tonight.
Canales was then asked about Young’s performance as a whole.
“I would say good. I would say good, not great,” he replied. “He definitely is gonna be critical of himself on a couple of the plays. But I thought when we had the protection and the concepts were there, he nailed it. And he was accurate like we’ve seen all camp and that was so exciting to see.”
Per ESPN’s David Newton, Young completed 11 of his 18 attempts for one touchdown.
