Overwhelmed Panthers QB Bryce Young got booed Sunday. He should have been benched

I’ve covered the Carolina Panthers for 30 years, and I’ve never heard boos at the home opener like these.

They came so early and so often, from a fan base so angry at a home team that doesn’t score touchdowns and doesn’t throw the ball deep but does enjoy a 2-yard pass on third-and-8.

The Panthers — and particularly quarterback Bryce Young — were booed in the second quarter. They were booed off the field at halftime. They were booed at the end of the game — a 26-3 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers.

It felt like a late-in-the-season bloodbath, one where a coach was about to get fired and a quarterback about to get benched. But this was only Week 2, and it was the first game the Panthers had played at home.

But such is the mood when you lose the first game 47-10 and, somehow, look even worse on offense with a week to work on things. The Panthers saw Young throw for a career-low 84 yards. It was a Jimmy Clausen-esque level of ineptitude, an endless time loop of three-and-outs.

This time the Carolina defense was somewhat presentable. But the offense, directed by a quarterback who appears to have lost all his confidence, was atrocious. Again.

Said Young of the frequent booing at Bank of America Stadium: I respect the passion that the city has for the team. So obviously that’s part of it.”

At halftime, I would have inserted veteran Andy Dalton for the rest of the game. Los Angeles had a 20-0 lead by then. It had been 30-0, Saints, the week before in the second quarter. The team needed a spark. A match. Anything.

I don’t mean play Dalton permanently. But he should have been brought in like a relief pitcher when the starter is getting shelled. Longtime Panthers fans know that Jake Delhomme entered the game at halftime of the 2003 home season opener and took off like a rocket. It can happen.

Alas, Dave Canales is determined to see the Young experiment through to the end, because in large part he was hired to fix Young. So he kept Young in the entire second half, and the Panthers kept refusing to ever take a deep shot and the boos kept coming down in torrents. That wasn’t good for anybody.

“Bryce is our quarterback,” Canales said firmly after the game, a couple of times. The coach promised Young would start next week at Las Vegas, too.

OK, sure. But at some point, you have to give Panthers fans some hope.

Dalton in the second half would have at least given the Panthers a smidgen of a shot at winning the game. With Young, there was none. You could tell this was just going to be one of those days for him, and you could tell because we’ve all seen a lot of days exactly like it.

Dating back to the end of last season, the Panthers have lost their most recent four games 26-0, 9-0, 47-10 and 26-3. They haven’t led a game for a single offensive play in the fourth quarter since the 2022 season (last year’s two wins came on final-play field goals).

Young, the player the Panthers mortgaged so much of their future to draft No. 1 in 2023, is a very nice young man who is now 2-16 as an NFL starter. Meanwhile, former Panther QBs Sam Darnold (Minnesota) and Baker Mayfield (Tampa Bay) are starting, playing well and are 2-0 this season.

I’m starting to think it’s us.

Panthers fans are all pulling out their hair and their AAA cards. I’m not talking about flat tires. Every game starts with annoyance, then anger, then apathy. At halftime of this one, Carolina had been penalized 55 yards and had 54 total yards.

Young made a slew of poor plays, as usual. There was the interception that looked remarkably like the one on the first offensive play of the season a week ago. There was the third down in which he had plenty of time to throw the ball out of bounds but instead took a sack, taking the team out of field-goal range. There were all the checkdown throws so short of the sticks, the throws that basically said: “Let me give up on this play, and we’ll punt.”

Young threw 26 passes. The longest gain was 12 yards. That’s nearly inconceivable in an NFL game not played in a snowstorm.

First-round draft choice Xavier Legette didn’t get a single target. All the other wide receivers combined had 36 yards worth of receptions. The team fell to an NFL-worst 31-70 in the David Tepper error, I mean era.

Young’s teammates, as usual, publicly stuck by him and said 0-2 wasn’t the end of the world.

“This is not a Bryce issue,” said receiver Adam Thielen said. “This is an offensive team issue. We are all in this together.”

Said center Austin Corbett: “We cannot let negativity crush this locker room.”

Said guard Robert Hunt: “We can’t let the house burn down.”

Of the frequent home-crowd booing, Hunt added: “Yeah, that’s miserable. That sucks. But I’ve heard it before (at a previous NFL stop)… And we turned that thing around.”

All true. But in the NFL, you also have to have great — or at least good — quarterback play to win anything that matters.

Last week, after the loss to the Saints, I wrote that Young looked overwhelmed and undersized and that I was unsure if it was ever going to work out for him and Carolina.

After this game, I’m less unsure.

Now it simply feels like it’s not going to work out.