Last week the Carolina Panthers made the decision to bench former first-round quarterback Bryce Young. Young had an abysmal first season with the Panthers in 2023, and things didn’t look any better for the young quarterback through the first two games of the 2024 season, despite the Panthers adding weapons around him to try and improve his performance.
The early returns on that decision suggest that the Panthers made the right call. In Dalton’s first game as the starter, he turned in one of the better QB performances we’ve seen this season, throwing for 319 yards and three touchdowns, finishing with a quarterback rating of 123.6. More than just the raw numbers, the Panthers offense looked like a different team on Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders than they had all season.
Dalton had the offense firing on all cylinders. He was able to make use of his weapons on offense – particularly newly-acquired wide receiver Diontae Johnson, who had his best game with the team on Sunday, catching eight passes for 122 yards and a touchdown. The running game was also effective for the first time all year, as running back Chuba Hubbard rushed for 114 yards on 21 carries, more yards and carries than he had in the previous two games combined.
The performance all but ensured that Dalton will remain the starting quarterback for at least the foreseeable future. The Panthers have remained adamant that they’re not looking to trade Young, but according to ESPN Insider Adam Schefter, many around the league believe that it’s only a matter of time before they go back on that decision. What does Dalton’s performance on Sunday say about a potential Young trade?
On one hand, you can make a pretty strong argument that Dalton going out and doing what he did on Sunday hurts any prospects of getting a good return for Young. Dalton went out and showed right away that the problem with the Panthers offense this season was at quarterback, and not the pieces around Young, as some may have thought. The fact that Dalton was able to come in and run a strong offense with those same pieces in place shows that the Panthers were on the right track with their efforts to bolster the offense – or at least one could argue that.
On the other hand, you can make an equally compelling argument that what Dalton was able to do just goes to show that Young simply needs to be built up from a confidence standpoint. Dalton showed that the pieces are in place, which suggests that Young simply needs to believe in himself, trust what he’s seeing out there, and make quicker, better decisions with the ball. There’s going to be plenty of teams out there who believe they have the staff in place that can instill that confidence in Young.
It’s also important to keep things in perspective when it comes to Dalton and his performance on Sunday. It’s just a one-game sample, and if Dalton comes back out there next week and puts up a game where he throws for less than 200 yards and a handful of interceptions, public perception is going to swing wildly back to at least neutral, if not back in Young’s favor.
Ultimately, it’s too early to tell if Dalton’s performance on Sunday had any real impact on a potential trade of Young. There’s still no indication that the Panthers are even shopping Young, and Dalton would need to do what he did on Sunday again and show that the results are repeatable to have any real detrimental impacts on a potential trade. At the very least, though, it may plant a seed of doubt on pursuing a trade for those teams convinced a Young trade is only a matter of time.
