4 burning Carolina Panthers fan questions entering Week 3 at the Raiders

Another week, another bewildering loss for the Carolina Panthers. The Los Angeles Chargers, who have a difficult time filling in their home stadium, saw their fans pile aplenty into Bank of America Stadium to watch their football team dominate the floundering home squad.

Down 20 at the half of this contest, it had the same stench of collective failure permeating around it as the Week 1 embarrassment. Starting quarterback Bryce Young had a final stat line of 18-of-26 attempts for 84 passing yards and one interception. He added one rush for six yards. The quarterback finished with a 6.5 QBR.

Chuba Hubbard finished the game with a 6.4 yards-per-carry mark, for comparison. How often the former Oklahoma State star got to tote the rock, on the other hand - that’s another can of worms we can open elsewhere.

Without confirmation on where the directive originated from, the team announced that Young was being benched. If you rooted against the former No. 1 overall pick, congratulations - the team failed him, and he showed the effects of how atrociously his rookie season played out. If you’ve defended the Heisman Trophy winner, you likely also understand that this version is a concerning one and the move makes football sense.

The organization has opened itself up for just about every line of questioning that you could imagine. And in a way, they did us the same courtesy here with the mailbag.

Now that we’ve gotten through the housekeeping, let’s get to the questions from the people still sticking around with this franchise entering Week 3 at the Las Vegas Raiders.

Burning questions Carolina Panthers fans are asking ahead of Week 3

The rookie quarterback dilemma

Should more teams have their rookie QBs wait to start like the (Green Bay) Packers do? – Clive Bixsby

In a perfect world, absolutely Clive. And Green Bay, Wisconsin is a fairly perfect quarterback world. They have been extremely fortunate to have back-to-back-to-back hits at the most important position in the sport.

But to be fair about it, that’s not a luxury that’s afforded to most teams. They were able to draft Aaron Rodgers in the latter portion of the first round in the 2005 NFL Draft after he experienced a draft day slide, according to most pundits. They weren’t the league’s worst team with the top overall selection. They could let the young player sit, while also still being the definition of a competitor because they’re still being captained by Brett Favre.

Jordan Love was a reminiscent scenario. He had some pre-draft hype as a top 15 type of prospect, but he also carried question marks about competition level and decision-making. When he was on the board at No. 26 in the 2020 NFL Draft, the Packers decided he was the perfect developmental answer to the question “How much longer is A-Rod in Wisconsin?”

That doesn’t mean that the team didn’t select good players, though.

No matter how fortunate an organization may come across as, having prospects fall into their laps - the development and handling are still 100 percent a team responsibility. Keeping confidence intact, getting enough practice reps for each party, and then having an approach ready for when it’s time to deploy the starter-in-waiting.

I love the idea of being able to sit a young player and learn the game if that’s possible. It’s also not a necessity for success. Proper roster building and good coaching matter just as much, if not more than most parts of the equation.