TankWatch: Carolina Panthers

Bryce Young has been benched. Now what?

Adam Thielen was not mad, just disappointed.

Thielen is the Carolina Panthers’ sitcom stepdad, the relatively recognizable voice of wisdom and reason on a team with an obscure coaching staff and minor-league roster. The 34-year old receiver arrived in 2023 to be rookie Bryce Young’s security blanket. Thielen did his part by catching 103 passes last year, most of them from his paperboy-sized quarterback. But enough was enough when Young could not find the wide-open Thielen over the middle in the third quarter of Sunday’s loss to the Chargers. Television cameras caught the normally-unflappable receiver barking his discontent as he stormed off the field.

“You try to be a leader, you try to be mature with how you handle yourself, but at some point it boils over," Thielen told reporters after the game. But he was careful to deflect blame for the Panthers woes from his helpless kitten of a quarterback. "I love Bryce to death, man,” Thielen said. “He works his butt off. He's a great player. This is not a Bryce Young issue. This is an offensive team issue."

The next day, Panthers head coach Dave Canales benched Young in favor of Andy Dalton. So maybe it was a teensy bit of a Young issue.

Welcome to TankWatch, which is like a groovy movie column, but it is about terrible NFL teams instead of schlocky horror films (though Panthers film is rather schlocky and horrific). And welcome to the 2024 Panthers, a “rebuilding team” whose starting lineup now includes Dalton, Thielen, Jadeveon Clowney and various other journeymen on the wrong side of their 30th birthdays.  

The Panthers Story So Far

The Panthers have burned through five regular and interim head coaches in the last 2.118 seasons. They traded two first-round picks, two second rounders and one of the best receivers in the NFL before the 2023 draft, not for some magic beans, but for Jack from the beanstalk fairytale. They purged most of their young nucleus in the offseason, replacing some capable young defenders with free agent castoffs from other organizations. 

Under the circumstances, some acute growing pains and an 0-2 start may have been expected. But the Panthers have been outscored 73-13 through two games, 50-3 in first halves. They are 2-of-22 on third down conversions. Opponents have completed 75.0% of their passes. Panthers receivers average just 7.9 yards per catch, which would be a paltry figure for a backup tight end. The Panthers are the ninth worst team in history after two games according to DVOA, with the caveat that advanced stats do not extend back to the expansion Buccaneers. 

Leadership Structure

Owner David Tepper is a hedge fund scuzzball turned multi-sport mogul. He’s like a cross between Dan Snyder without the lacertine charisma and Jimmy Haslam with less wisdom and foresight. Tepper is imperious, impetuous, meddlesome and incompetent.

General manager Dan Morgan is the football equivalent of the officer commanding the fleet after Darth Vader Force-choked all his superiors at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. A former Panthers linebacker and assistant GM who hid beneath his desk during Tepper’s most recent firing spree, Morgan possesses baseline managerial qualifications and would probably be OK if he had any resources to work with. 

Canales may be the NFL’s handsomest head coach. He looks a little like Kliff Kingsbury without the douchebag-at-Burning-Man vibe, or Sean McVay with 20% more Casanova and 60% less leprechaun. 

Canales spent a decade on Pete Carroll’s staff in Seattle, working his way up from the guy who brought Russell Wilson his magic mineral water to the guy who nodded through Wilson’s self-actualization sessions to the guy Wilson tuned out before running around in circles and heaving bombs. Canales spent 2023 calling the Buccaneers plays, reinvigorating the two-handoffs-and-cross-your-fingers-on-third-and-8 attack. 

When Adam Schefter announced Young’s benching on Tuesday, he quoted a source calling the move “Dave Canales’ first big-boy decision.” Someone in the Panthers command structure wanted Schefter to include that phrase as part of the scoops-for-messaging barter economy. Schefter also name-dropped former Chiefs executive Brandt Tills, who occupies a rung on the Panthers org chart between Morgan and Canales (perhaps with a dotted line to Tepper), in the same report. Probably a coincidence?

Quarterback Situation

Bryce Young is a human Sunk Cost Fallacy with a 30-inch inseam. He is a product of pre-draft groupthink, the Manning Academy old-boy network, a little helicopter parenting, an Alabama program that surrounded him with more talent than the Panthers currently possess and a dash of magical realism. He lacks any NFL-caliber trait except intelligence, dedication and leadership. If those traits turned 5-foot-10 individuals into NFL players, you or I might have had a five-year career. 

Bleacher Report insider Jordan Schultz reported on Monday that “Young and those close to him were ‘very shocked’ at the organization’s decision to bench him this morning. ‘It came out of nowhere,’ one source said.” That source was almost certainly one or both of Young’s media-savvy and well-connected parents. At any rate, if Young was shocked by the benching, it explains the way he handles a blitz.

Dalton has looked like the 27th-to-35th best quarterback in the universe over the last four years in spot starts for the Panthers, Saints, Bears and Cowboys.

What’s Going Right

Nothing. 

The Panthers have even had rotten injury luck this year. Derrick Brown, their best defensive lineman, is out for the year with a knee injury. Tight end Ian Thomas and other useful role players are also on Team IR. Dozens of minor injuries across the roster forced Canales to play his third and fourth strings in the preseason and mix-and-match during training camp practices, which has probably contributed to the team’s historically-dreadful start.

What’s Going Wrong

Even with Brown on the field for much of Week 1, the Panthers defensive front got pushed straight into the parking lot by both the Saints and Chargers offensive lines. Both Panthers opponents could have scored over 50 points if the Saints didn’t ease off the gas pedal and Jim Harbaugh wasn’t so dedicated to sacrificing yardage and points to the greater glory of 300-pound fullbacks. 

Morgan’s free-agent acquisitions have been unsurprisingly disappointing. Diontae Johnson is carrying on in the JuJu Smith-Schuster/Chase Claypool tradition of ex-Steelers wide receivers who briefly looked great when Ben Roethlisberger was force-feeding them targets. Linebacker Josey Jewell looks pokey, Jordan Fuller washed. Cornerback Dane Jackson is on Team IR. Clowney, who earned lots of offseason accolades, is like an old movie star doing infomercials for term life insurance at this point in his career.

As for recent draft picks, Jonathan Mingo is a lumbering possession target who fumbled in Week 1. Left tackle Ikem Ekwonu still makes rookie mistakes in his third season. Running back Jonathan Brooks is on Team IR. Receiver Xavier Legette and tight end Ja’Tavion Sanders, two prospects I liked in the 2024 draft, have seven catches on ten targets for 47 yards. Matt Corral – Matt F***ing Corral, the proto-Bryce the Panthers drafted in the third round in 2022 – is long gone.

Building Blocks

Ekwonu can very charitably be classified as a potential core young player, as could the 2024 draftees. Brown is a nasty young veteran on a long-term contract. 

And then there is cornerback Jaycee Horn, who has given up two touchdowns already this season but also intercepted Justin Herbert and stepped up in run support. Horn has shutdown-cornerback traits and is still on his rookie contract. He’s the Panthers’ best young player and their only real trade commodity.

Future Assets

The Panthers only have $43 million in paper cap space for 2025 but can clear a lot more by releasing veterans like Thielen, Clowney and Miles Sanders next offseason. Of course, a veteran cap purge will only leave the Panthers roster more depleted, and the team runs the risk of clearing space just to acquire the next bunch of Clowney and Sanders-types.

Many future cap bucks are invested in offensive linemen Robert Hunt, Austin Corbett and Taylor Moton, whom Young cannot see over. Reports on the quality of these linemen vary; these ain’t The Hogs, but the Panthers’ pass-protection problems appear Young/Canales-based to me. 

The Panthers have their first-round pick for 2025. Their second-rounder goes to the Bears in the Young trade, but they got a second-rounder back from the Rams. They have two fifth-round picks in 2025 as a result of the Brian Burns trade. 

Rebuilding Plan

As per TankWatch tradition, we now attempt to solve the Panthers’ many problems.

Vaultin’ With Dalton. The Young benching should be made permanent, barring a Dalton injury or a post-Christmas “youth movement” that might coincidentally lead to a higher draft pick.

The rest of the Panthers roster cannot be evaluated with Young at quarterback. Youngsters like Mingo, Legette and Sanders cannot get the ball. The run is abandoned at kickoff. Offensive linemen who handle their assignments well end up charged with coverage sacks or scramble-into-danger sacks. The defense is on the field forever against opponents content to play punt-and-pin.

Dalton can create an environment where the Panthers offense is at least functional enough for young players to develop. That is worth far more than the difference between, say, the first and fourth pick in the 2025 draft. If you disagree, note how the 2023 draft unfolded. 

Trade Horn. He’s injury prone and developing questionable on-field habits. But he’s currently healthy and talented as hell, and he is more likely to help a contender now than the Panthers by the time they are competitive. 

The only other veteran on the roster with a tradeable age/quality/contract profile might be Thielen. If some contender offers a late-round pick for him to be the fourth option in their passing game, the Panthers should do their reluctant face-of-the-franchise a solid. 

Young may be tradeable in the offseason for Kenny Pickett-level compensation. There are coaches out there who think they can fix tiny.

No More Power Struggles. The Panthers front office has been at war with itself since Tepper took over. Not to read too much into Schefter’s “big-boy” nugget, but it sure sounds like factions have already developed within the new regime. 

Frank Reich’s brief tenure was marked by a disconnect with Tepper and Scott Fitterer; one of them (probably Reich) preferred C.J. Stroud to Young, and the trio could not endure a full season together. Fitterer arrived as a check-and-balance to Matt Rhule and was fired in January because, well, look at his trades and his draft classes. It’s arguable that everyone from Rhule onward was just bad at their jobs, but poor communication, lack of continuity and old-fashioned in-fighting made things worse. Morgan, Canales and Tillis must learn to coexist.

Of course, that starts at the top.

Hope Tepper Gets Distracted and Wanders Off. Tepper now has $800 million in stadium renovation money to spend, which is bad news for taxpayers but could keep him busy enough to not meddle in football operations. He is also palling around with the guy from The Big Short and investing heavily overseas; perhaps he can move to China to keep an eye on his new endeavors! 

Master-of-the-Universe slimeballs like Tepper are easily distracted. But they are also experts at half-assed multitasking. Maybe Tepper needs a baseball franchise? His own social network? Anything to keep him from taking a blowtorch to the org chart or making suggestions in the draft war room because he’s bored and needs to ruin some lives for his amusement.

Bottom Line

Imagine a roster of Baker Mayfield, Christian McCaffrey, D.J. Moore, Brian Burns, Frankie Luvu, the Ekwonu-Corbett-Moton line, Brown, Horn and a few capable veterans (Shaq Thompson, Johnny Hekker) who weren’t mentioned earlier. That team would not be a threat to the 49ers in the NFC, but it could compete for a division title, especially if supplemented with a recent draftee or two. Say, a Darnell Wright to punch up the line and a Tyrique Stevenson in the secondary?

The Panthers possessed that very team (minus Wright and Stevenson) in 2022. They went 6-6 down the stretch, albeit without the traded-at-the-deadline McCaffrey. They traded some of the assets for Young, some for more-or-less nothing (McCaffrey’s draft picks became Mingo and nondescript edge rusher D.J. Johnson) and let others wander off as free agents. It’s practically a Brewster’s Millions scenario, with Young as the priceless postage stamp that will soon be mailed back to Tuscaloosa.

Tepper isn’t going anywhere, which means that the Panthers could be trapped in a Browns/Washington nightmare of maleficence and mismanagement. But they need to at least find a way to become competitive again. That will require lots of big-boy decisions, starting with giving up on the smol quarterback.