After benching QB Bryce Young, where do Panthers go from here?

When Carolina hired Dave Canales to take over a 2-15 team that was the worst in the NFL last year, the easy reaction was, "Well, there's nowhere to go but up there."

Nope.

The Panthers have managed to regress in the first two games of 2024, and nowhere more so than at quarterback, where former No. 1 pick Bryce Young has gotten worse in all aspects. Carolina trailed the Saints 30-0 at halftime in the opener, then lost 26-3 to the Chargers in Week 2.

As a result, Canales decided to bench Young and have veteran Andy Dalton step in as starter. The decision came as a surprise to many, especially considering that Canales gave Young a vote of confidence after Sunday's loss.

"This is the best decision for our group, for our team, going forward," Canales said Monday morning in announcing the change.

Young, for all his rookie struggles, was perhaps the biggest remaining hope the Panthers had for a rebound and eventual success. When you make an investment as big as Carolina did, the most important priority is developing that young quarterback to be a future star. And now, just two games into his second season, Young has lost the starting job, a damning and humbling decision for a franchise that has gotten so much wrong in recent years.

Carolina didn't have its pick of the top candidates in the hiring cycle this spring, and the best spin for Canales being a smart match was that he had a well-earned reputation for turning quarterbacks around, having helped revive Geno Smith in Seattle and Baker Mayfield in Tampa over the past two years.

Andy Dalton was not the turnaround the Panthers had in mind to continue that trend.

Dalton turns 37 next month, and he played well in a single spot start last year when Young was injured, throwing for 361 yards and two touchdowns in a loss to the Seahawks. For perspective, in 18 career starts, Young has thrown for more than 250 yards once and has thrown multiple touchdowns in a game just twice.

The Panthers will say this isn't a permanent change, that time on the sidelines can help Young collect himself, find some confidence and be better prepared to handle the starting role when comes back to him. Perhaps they'll pull that off, but if that's the goal, do they even want Dalton to play well, to be the spark that Young couldn't be for a team still searching for a new identity?

Today's NFL all but forces teams that don't have a franchise quarterback to overpay just to have a chance at landing one, and that's what a desperate Panthers team did in 2023. Chicago got a ridiculous windfall for Young: receiver DJ Moore, the pick that ended up being this year's No. 1 overall in quarterback Caleb Williams, plus picks that netted a starting tackle in Darnell Wright and a corner in Tyrique Stevenson, who already has a pick-six this season. And the Panthers are not finished paying that bill, as Chicago will have Carolina's second-round pick in 2025, which almost certainly will be a top-40 pick.

That the Texans, picking second last year, struck gold with C.J. Stroud, didn't help Young, who's constantly being compared to a quarterback picked later but ahead in nearly every other aspect. Stroud is 11-6 as a starter, already having led Houston to a division title and a playoff win, with expectations for even more in Year 2. If that weren't enough, Carolina can only watch as two quarterbacks they had cheaply in 2022, Mayfield and Sam Darnold, have combined for 46 touchdowns since leaving the Panthers. Both are 2-0 in leading the Bucs and Vikings, respectively, to impressive starts in 2024.

Before the decision to bench Young, there was a legitimate question whether the Panthers would win a single game in 2024. Their best player, defensive tackle Derrick Brown, was lost to a season-ending injury in Week 1, so the defense has taken a step back. The offense is dead last in the NFL at 176 yards per game — somehow 89 yards worse than 2023's league-low average — and the defense is giving up a league-high 36 points per game, 12 more than last year.

Dalton is only two years removed from starting 14 games for the 2022 Saints, throwing 18 touchdowns against nine interceptions and going 6-8 as the starter. Perhaps his veteran leadership will give the rest of the team a chance to develop more quickly — a young receiving corps hasn't shown much in two games, but nobody has on this team.

Panthers owner David Tepper has been famously impatient with his head coaches, moving on from Matt Rhule, then Frank Reich in midseason last year. So the hope for Canales was that he would have more leeway to turn things around, more grace to stick around long enough to find better days with the Panthers. That could still be the case, but if the franchise has now moved on from a No. 1 overall pick, how long will ownership stick with a third coach who couldn't turn that pick into the player they drafted him to be?

Carolina's road doesn't get easier. They travel to face a Raiders team that just beat the Ravens, then return home to face a Bengals team that nearly beat the Chiefs. Then, almost cruelly, they go to Chicago in Week 5, facing a Bears team whose foundation is built around the trade that sent Young to the Panthers. 

If Carolina wins that game with him on the bench, is it even a victory?

This was always going to be a long year for the Panthers. Some national pundits picked them to finish ahead of the Saints, and even that bold third-place prediction looked foolish before halftime of the first game of the year. Now Canales has to regroup and move forward without the optimism that comes with a young, improving quarterback. The rookie head coach's relentless energy and positivity were going to be tested with this job, and this has already been more difficult than anticipated.

After all, this has to be rock bottom, right?

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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