The Bryce is wrong — again. Will Young and the Panthers ever solve the puzzle?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Bryce Young committed three turnovers as Panthers fell 26-10 to Jaguars in season opener.
- Coach Dave Canales' risky fourth-down call failed near Jacksonville's goal line.
- Carolina extended its league-worst Week 1 record to 11-20 with another flat opener.
It was the sort of agonizing loss that makes you question everything:
Whether Bryce Young can really be an NFL quarterback. Whether Dave Canales can really coach a winner. And whether the Carolina Panthers are just stuck in an endless loop of embarrassment, one that alternately humiliates and enrages their fans.
The Carolina Panthers lost their season opener, 26-10, on the road to the Jacksonville Jaguars Sunday. Young had three turnovers — two interceptions and a fumble that he lost when he didn’t slide. Canales had the Panthers throwing the ball out of an empty set with five receivers on fourth-and-1 from the Jacksonville 5, which didn’t work. Carolina’s defense was somewhat better than last year, but still allowed 200 yards rushing.
Panther fans everywhere shook their heads for this game’s four-plus hours and probably threw in a few four-letter words, too. They had time to do so — the game unfortunately stretched even longer than usual due to a 76-minute weather delay in the second quarter.
“That’s a picture of where we’re at right now,” Canales said afterward. It’s not a pretty one.
By this point, it’s getting harder and harder to pretend that change is right around the corner for the Panthers. Young is 6-23 in his 29 games as Carolina’s starter. Canales is 5-13 as the team’s head coach. Dave Tepper is 36-81 as the team’s owner. The Panthers are like that junky car on blocks in the backyard — everyone takes a turn at trying to fix it up, and a lot of money gets invested in the parts, but it remains an eyesore.
Said Young: “It’s on us to play better…. You know, it’s nothing about the organization or the coach or anything like that.”
Canales talked about the Panthers’ turnovers several times — twice in his press conference he referenced the team making four of them. In reality, it was only three turnovers, as a potential pick-six interception by Young that would have been the fourth was nullified due to a defensive holding penalty on Jacksonville.
Even more than the turnovers, though, I thought the Panthers lost their last chance at winning on the first drive of the third quarter.
Down 17-3, they moved the ball steadily to the Jacksonville 6, where they faced second-and-2. After two unsuccessful Chuba Hubbard runs, the Panthers had a fourth-and-1.
It was there that Canales went with the empty backfield and the five-receiver set. It didn’t come close to working.
The play is worth a closer look, because Young’s reaction was so out of character for the mild-mannered quarterback. When it failed to generate an open receiver, and Young scrambled left and missed the throw by a mile, he was obviously frustrated.
The quarterback walked to the sideline. Canales patted his head and tried to say something to him, but Young kept walking, then angrily slammed his helmet down. For Young, this amounts to a major temper tantrum.
What happened there exactly?
“I’m never going to share that kind of stuff publicly,” Canales said. “I think that’s just something that he and I will work through, you know, and talk about. But his frustration wasn’t directed at me in that. We were just talking about: ‘We got to keep playing ball.’”
Young said he wasn’t mad at the play call but left everyone guessing as to what had perturbed him so much.
“When you’re not executing,” the QB said, “it sucks.” He also said he could “definitely could do a better job of body language there.”
Not executing in Week 1 has been a common occurrence for the Panthers for decades. They are now 11-20 all-time in season openers. By winning percentage, that’s the worst record of the NFL’s 32 teams.
Young hasn’t been around but for the last three of those 31 openers, but that trio has some common themes.
In all three of those games, the Panthers have lost. In all three they have scored exactly 10 points. In all three, Young has thrown two interceptions. In all three, Young has thrown for fewer than 170 yards and had a quarterback rating under 50.
The Carolina locker room was frustrated afterward.
Said Panthers center Austin Corbett, speaking generally of the team’s lack of offensive output and not specifically about any one player: “Total frustration… We do this all the time here, you know, everything that’s been said is ‘It’s a long year. It’s a long year.’ Blah, blah. But it’s been three long years since I’ve been here, so we’ve got to make a drastic change.”
The Panthers didn’t score a touchdown for the game’s first 55 minutes. Down 23-3, they finally got one when Hubbard took a two-yard pass from Young in the flat, broke a tackle and ended up with a 27-yard TD. That made the stats look better, at least.
It wasn’t all Young’s fault by any means. Xavier Legette could have gotten both feet down on a sideline route that would have been good for 20 yards, but he didn’t toe-tap correctly. Rookie Tetairoa McMillan (five catches, 68 yards) had a chance on a nice throw from Young on another fourth-down play that could have been a touchdown, but in close coverage couldn’t come down with a one-handed catch.
Said Canales when asked if he expected the two young receivers to make those catches: “Absolutely. Looking for those guys to just finish those players…. We’re counting on them to do that…. The consistency it takes to be really good is you make all the ones you’re supposed to make — and some of the special ones.”
The Panthers really didn’t do much special Sunday. Cornerback Jaycee Horn had a leaping one-handed interception. Hubbard turned that short pass into a touchdown. That was about it.
In the meantime, Jacksonville — 4-13 a year ago, which was one game worse than Carolina’s 2024 record — never trailed. While rookie Travis Hunter had a relatively quiet day in his NFL debut, with six catches for 33 yards, tailback Travis Etienne rolled through the Panthers for 143 rushing yards. By halftime, the game was never much in doubt.
Now the Panthers travel to Arizona (1-0) on Sunday, trying to right a ship that so often seems to be in the middle of a storm. “I think there’s a look of surprise, a little bit, for the guys,” Canales said, “because they know what kind of group we have in there.”
They know what kind of group they think they have, anyway.
But the results for the last seven-plus years would tell you differently. The Panthers have been in a rut so long they sometimes convince themselves it’s a groove. They looked nothing like a winning team Sunday. But they did look familiar.
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This story was originally published September 7, 2025 at 8:22 PM.
