Bryce Young’s benching latest example of Panthers' front-office malpractice

There’s no sugarcoating it: second-year Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young was a disaster in the team’s 26-3 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday.

His final stat line — 18 completions on 26 pass attempts for 84 yards and an interception — was one of the worst QB performances in recent memory, and his benching was more than justified.

While most of the blame for a team's irrelevance would normally fall on its quarterback, the bulk of the blame for what’s going on with the Panthers needs to land squarely on the shoulders of the front office, and more specifically, owner David Tepper.

As The 33rd Team’s Ari Meirov points out, over the last three seasons, Carolina has traded away several star players, including running back Christian McCaffrey, wide receiver D.J. Moore and edge-rusher Brian Burns. In the process, it’s given up more first-round picks (two) than it got back (one), and Tepper stood back and let it happen.

All three of those players were also 26 years old or younger when they were traded, and none of them brought back a blue-chip player to build a team around.

The Panthers essentially flipped McCaffrey, Moore and Burns for Young, tight ends Brenton Strange and Darnell Washington, edge-rusher Nick Herbig and cornerback Chau Smith-Wade.

The draft picks recouped from those trades amounted to two seconds, a third, a fourth and three fifths, and it cost them two firsts, two seconds and a fifth, plus the chance to draft quarterback Caleb Williams.

But even if the Panthers had a gaggle of first-round picks to work with, there’s evidence to suggest there’s a better-than-not chance they wouldn’t have done much with them. Carolina has been one of the worst-drafting teams over the last 15 years.

From 2000-08, the Panthers drafted 12 Pro Bowlers, but from 2009 to present day, they’ve only drafted nine. Every Pro Bowler the team has drafted and developed since 2015, except one — defensive lineman Derrick Brown — has been either traded or allowed to hit free agency and signed elsewhere.

There’s no question the Panthers are in a worse place now than they were when Tepper took over as owner in 2018. Since then, Carolina is 31-68 and has run through seven head coaches and 10 different starting quarterbacks.

To make matters worse, the Panthers have a 23-year-old former No. 1 overall pick at quarterback who’s now riding the bench. General manager Dan Morgan has arguably the toughest task in the NFL —finding a way to dig the Panthers out of the hole Tepper has dug for them.

It feels way too early to give up on Young at this point, but he also hasn’t shown any signs of progressing or developing, so the Panthers could just cut their losses and hit the reset button in 2025.