2 wild Carolina Panthers overreactions heading into Week 2 vs. the Chargers

The general mood surrounding the Carolina Panthers has never been bleaker than it is right now.

Coming off a last-place 2-15 season when the team didn’t even get solace in their No. 1 overall pick, there was some muted hope that Carolina might put on a renewed display against the New Orleans Saints in Week 1. Those hopes were quickly dashed.

After a 47-10 drubbing at the hands of Derek Carr and Alvin Kamara, the Panthers are licking their wounds. They will try and examine what happened before their Week 2 home opener against the Los Angeles Chargers.

There has been a bevy of chatter online, on television, and in sports columns regarding the Panthers and their outlook for the rest of 2024 and beyond. Some of it is warranted. Some of it is not. Let’s look at two of the biggest overreactions from a demoralizing loss.

Carolina Panthers overreactions heading into Week 2 vs. Chargers

The Carolina Panthers will never be good again

It may not be an overreaction to declare the Panthers frontrunners for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft or even to predict they will go 0-17 after the display they put on. Carolina got manhandled in all facets of the game and was never really a threat to the Saints.

It’s hard to take away any sort of silver lining from that embarrassment, other than to say Week 1 can often be very flukey. It will also take a good amount of time to see what head coach Dave Canales can do with this team, especially when he lacks proper roster talent to work with.

Rebuilding is a time-consuming process. As sick as fans are of the team missing the playoffs, it was never going to happen with the stripped-down defense and bandaged-together offense Canales and general manager Dan Morgan put together for 2024. This is a multi-year reshaping of the team, and the first season is always the roughest.

While it’s easy to say the Panthers have entered their “Cleveland Browns” era when little has gone right since roughly November of 2018, a turnaround is never out of the question.

The Detroit Lions, futile for decades, opened a new regime under Dan Campbell in 2021 and are now among the leading contenders to win the NFC this season. The Cincinnati Bengals finished 2-14 in 2019. In only two seasons, they went from last in their division to playing in the biggest game of the year after drafting quarterback Joe Burrow at No. 1 overall.

Greener pastures are ahead for the Panthers, maybe (hopefully) even sooner than most fans think.

Bryce Young needs to be benched

It was not a great look for Bryce Young or for those who spent most of the summer defending him.

The 2023 No. 1 overall pick completed 13-of-30 pass attempts for 161 yards and two interceptions - one of which came on the Panthers’ first offensive play of the game. He struggled to find his reads and his throws were routinely well-off targets. The Saints heckled him with a series of blitzes that he must have either failed to pick up or felt he couldn’t audible for pre-snap.

He posted a QBR of 10.5, which was the lowest in his career and second lowest in the league ahead of only Deshaun Watson. Young largely seemed out of it for the duration of the game, cameras frequently caught him staring ahead on the sideline with a seemingly empty expression.

The signal caller exhibited similar issues for most of last season, but it was hard to determine how much blame could be laid at his feet when his offensive line struggled to give him time to throw and his receivers could not generate separation. Against the Saints, those issues were not present.

Newly acquired interior linemen Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis scored the highest Pro Football Focus grades on the team for the week. Young, on the other hand, scored the lowest.

His play has led some to call for the Panthers to sit him in favor of backup Andy Dalton. Giving up on the Heisman Trophy winner after 17 games of action would be incredibly hasty, no matter how poorly they play.

Young received a significant investment from the team in terms of resources to become their quarterback of the future. Even if he can’t, there’s no reason to trot Dalton out to scrape out an extra win or two and fall further down the draft board unless he could truly be the difference between making and missing the playoffs. Based on how the rest of the team played, that probably isn’t the case.

It's still too early to write Young off just yet.

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