Bryce Young threw for 448 yards against Atlanta two weeks ago. Last week he beat the Rams. The same quarterback Carolina benched after two starts last September now has the Panthers sitting at 7-6, half a game out in the NFC South. I’ll just say it: Young is the best Year 3 turnaround in football right now. Nobody else is even in the conversation.
Twelve games, 2,337 yards, 18 touchdowns, nine picks, 63.4% completion rate. Bryce Young has already cracked the top five on Carolina’s all-time quarterback list with just 30 starts. The bust talk is dead. Gone. What we’re watching is a 24-year-old who finally looks like the player Tuscaloosa kept telling us he was.
He’s Running the Burrow Playbook
Joe Burrow’s 2022 season is what Young’s chasing. And honestly? He’s closer than the box score shows.
Burrow that year: 4,475 yards, 35 touchdowns, 12 picks, 100.8 rating. Carried Cincinnati to the AFC title game. Young over 16 games projects to maybe 3,100 yards, 24 touchdowns, rating in the low 90s. So no, he’s not putting up Burrow numbers. But people forget that Burrow had Ja’Marr Chase. One of the best young receivers in football, hauling in everything. Young? He’s got Tetairoa McMillan, a rookie, and Xavier Legette, who disappears for weeks. Goes completely ghost. Just vanishes from the offense.
The connection between them isn’t Year 3. It’s the wreckage that came before. Burrow shredded his knee as a rookie. ACL gone. Done. Young took 62 sacks behind the worst offensive line in football and went 2-15. Both looked cooked before they ever really started. Burrow needed Zac Taylor to figure out the offense and a Super Bowl trip to prove it worked. Young’s getting his version of that right now with Dave Canales.
| QB (Year 3) | Games | TD/INT | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bryce Young (2025) | 12 | 18/9 | 7-6 |
| Joe Burrow (2022) | 16 | 35/12 | 12-4 |
| Trevor Lawrence (2023) | 16 | 21/14 | 9-8 |
| Baker Mayfield (2020) | 16 | 26/8 | 11-5 |
Nobody talks about this part: Year 4 wrecked almost everyone.
Burrow’s fourth season was a mess. Wrist blew out Week 11 against Baltimore and that was it. Ten games. Bengals stumbled to 9-8 and missed the playoffs. Lawrence had it worse somehow. Shoulder acted up, then Azeez Al-Shaair gave him that concussion that got Al-Shaair suspended. Lawrence went 2-8. Jacksonville finished 4-13. Murray tore his ACL in 2022. Missed most of the second half. Three of four first-overall picks from Young’s draft class got destroyed by injuries in their fourth year.
Three. Out. Of. Four.
Young hasn’t missed a game in two years. That’s his edge. But it’s also just luck. One bad hit changes everything. One awkward tackle and it’s over.
The Numbers That Actually Matter
I don’t care about yards. Completion percentage either. What I care about is the fourth quarter when everyone’s watching.
Young has 11 game-winning drives since 2023. Fourth quarter, overtime, doesn’t matter. He just wins those games. That’s the most in the league. Mahomes has fewer. Josh Allen has fewer. Jalen Hurts has fewer. Young became the youngest player in NFL history to hit 11 game-winning drives. He was 24 years and 128 days old when he passed Allen and Peyton Manning. Everyone said this kid couldn’t win. Now he wins more close games than anyone.
That Atlanta game? 31 of 45, three touchdowns, no turnovers, came back from 14 down. His passer rating was 123.2 and nine different receivers caught passes.
Go look at the current quarterback rankings, and you’ll see why people changed their minds so fast about Bryce Young. He’s not elite. But the gap is closing every week. Carolina hasn’t had a quarterback this talented since Newton won MVP and even that might be underselling Young given the supporting cast he’s working with.
McMillan had 130 yards and two touchdowns against Atlanta. The kid is legit. Legette finally started showing up after disappearing in October. And the offensive line? They were a disaster last year, but somehow they’ve cut Young’s sack rate nearly in half this season. When he has time, he delivers. Every single time. It’s almost funny how obvious this was to anyone paying attention.
Year 4 Could Break Him or Make Him Untouchable
Fourth seasons are brutal for quarterbacks. Just brutal. Look at this:
| QB (Year 4) | Games | Yards | TD/INT | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bryce Young (2026 proj.) | 17 | 4000 | 26/11 | 11-6 |
| Kyler Murray (2022) | 11 | 2,368 | 14/7 | 4-13 |
| Trevor Lawrence (2024) | 10 | 2,045 | 11/7 | 2-8 |
| Joe Burrow (2023) | 10 | 2,309 | 15/6 | 5-5 |
| Baker Mayfield (2021) | 14 | 3,010 | 17/13 | 8-9 |
Young stayed healthy while three of four comparable quarterbacks went down with injuries. That matters. But durability isn’t something you control. It’s luck, and eventually luck runs out on everybody.
What does 2026 look like? If everything goes right, maybe 4,000 yards and 26 touchdowns. A divisional round game. That assumes Carolina upgrades at receiver and finds a left tackle who can actually block. If things go wrong? A wrist injury tanks his season like Burrow. Or a shoulder situation derails everything like Lawrence. Production falls to 3,000 yards and the team finishes 7-10. I could see either outcome, honestly.
Run Carolina through the Super Bowl Simulator, and the Panthers are a huge long shot to win the Super Bowl in February. If they split with Tampa and beat New Orleans that number climbs yet the odds are extremely low.
Carolina’s Front Office Has Four Games to Prove They Deserve Him
The schedule down the stretch: Saints, Buccaneers, Seahawks, then Buccaneers again. Win three and they’re playing in January. Tampa is the whole ballgame. Mayfield’s dealing with an AC joint sprain in his left shoulder, and their defense has been shaky all year. If Young beats Mayfield twice in December, Carolina takes the division.
But I keep coming back to this: Young broke out despite the organization. Not because of it.
They yanked him after two games last September. For Andy Dalton. Andy freaking Dalton. They watched defensive lines crush him 62 times as a rookie and didn’t do anything about it. They traded D.J. Moore to Chicago before Young ever got to build chemistry with a real number-one receiver. The front office spent three years figuring out what anybody who watched Alabama already knew. This kid is special when you don’t sabotage him.
The Offseason Will Tell Us Everything
Young doesn’t need playoff games anymore. He proved he belongs. The question is whether Carolina proves they deserve him.
One offseason. Get him a real second receiver. Get a left tackle who won’t get him killed. Do that and he’s a top-10 quarterback next December. Screw it up and he’s demanding out by 2027.
The Burrow path is right there. Carolina just has to stop getting in its own way.
AI-Assisted Content (AIAC): Human ideas, drafts, and final edits—enhanced by AI.
