For the Carolina Panthers to win their first NFC South championship in a decade, they needed quarterback Bryce Young to show out against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And this was precisely the sort of big-game environment where he thrived in college at Alabama.
Young's demonstrated tremendous resolve over the second half of 2025. It's not been perfect all the time, but his disastrous outings are becoming far less frequent. There's a fresh confidence around the signal-caller that is hard not to love, and the Panthers needed this more than ever with the playoffs at stake in Week 18.
The Panthers wanted to leave no doubt. Head coach Dave Canales' squad could still make the playoffs even with a defeat, but nobody wanted to be cheering for the Atlanta Falcons. They needed to get the job done themselves, and the Buccaneers came into the contest with a 1-7 record over their last eight contests, further fueling the encouragement.
It's been a long time since the Panthers were involved in a game of this magnitude. As it turned out, Carolina came unstuck to see its postseason aspirations hanging by a thread.
With this in mind, here are five significant observations from Young's performance in a do-or-die situation versus Tampa Bay.
Major observations from Bryce Young's performance against the Buccaneers
Bryce Young in play-action
The conditions were nothing short of atrocious right out of the gate. That was always going to make it more difficult for Bryce Young to produce results through the air. And it didn't take long to figure out his primary method for moving the chains.
Even though the Carolina Panthers didn't manage to generate much on the ground, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers still had to account for it. This enabled Young to maximize his play-action ability, which he did effectively whenever given the chance.
This gives Young just a little extra time to go through his progressions and find the correct read. There were a couple of outstanding examples of this in the first half, with strikes delivered to the young wide receiver tandem of Brycen Tremayne and Jimmy Horn Jr. Things would have been even better if not for some crucial drops in key moments. Still, play-action should remain a focal point of this offense moving forward.
It's not going to work all the time. However, until the Panthers can find receivers who can get open consistently outside of first-round rookie Tetairoa McMillan, this must be their strategy.