The best way to develop a franchise quarterback in the NFL is a question of nature vs. nurture.
The Carolina Panthers are clearly leaning on the nature side of the argument because it’s hard to imagine a less nurturing environment than the one top draft pick Bryce Young has navigated this year.
Unlike most No. 1 overall picks, Young was able to avoid being sent to the worst team in the league. The Panthers traded up from the “merely bad” range of the draft to the top spot in order to choose him. A coaching change, three switches in who was calling plays for Young and one of the worst pass protections in the NFL have helped to make the Panthers the worst team in the league this season.
Young had all the natural gifts you could want in a quarterback. A Heisman winner and national champion in college, he was the latest in a long line of Alabama quarterbacks to head to the NFL. Pro personnel gurus said that he was the clear-cut No. 1 choice in the draft and most ready to step in and start in the league.
Thirteen games, and 12 losses, into his rookie season, Young — who missed one of those games to injury — has not shown much development. Sunday’s loss against the Saints may have been his worst as a pro. He completed just 13 of 36 passes in the game, the worst completion percentage of his short career. He failed to throw a touchdown pass for the third straight week. His passer rating of 48.0 was the worst of his career, as was his 3.81 yards per attempt.
It was a low point, but as receiver Adam Theilen said, “We’ve been at rock bottom for a while.”
Young is last in the league in passer rating, behind Jets’ flame-out Zach Wilson, Raiders fill-in Aidan O’Connell and Will Levis, who sat in the green room, unwanted and not selected, throughout the first night of this year’s NFL Draft. He’s also last in the league in QBR, the analytics-based replacement for passer rating.
Of course, that’s part of developing a quarterback, the experts always say. Plenty of top picks struggled as rookies. Even among that group, however, Young doesn’t stack up well.
Young is the ninth quarterback to be taken first overall since Cam Newton was drafted by the Panthers in 2011. As rookies, the other eight quarterbacks had an average of 11.61 yards per completion. Young is at 8.98, the lowest figure of any of the nine by three-quarters of a yard. The other eight top picks had 6.97 yards per attempt. Young is at 5.25, also the lowest of the nine. His completion percentage is ahead of Jameis Winston, Jared Goff and Andrew Luck, but he has the lowest rookie passer rating by more than 7 points, and the lowest QBR by 11.
There are two areas where Young tops the list of rookie top picks. He’s been sacked 48 times this year, which ties Kyler Murray for the most of the nine quarterbacks.
Getting sacked once a quarter isn’t good for a young quarterback’s health or psyche. But interim coach Chris Tabor rejected any notion that benching Young to protect him could be in the cards.
“I think he’s going to continue to improve,” he said right after Sunday’s game. “(The line trouble) doesn’t concern me at all.”
After having a day to review tape and sleep on the statement, Tabor doubled down.
“The only way to become a better football player is by playing football,” he said. “The only way to get experience in the NFL is by playing.”
Of course, the argument starts to fall apart if you don’t accept the premise of Tabor’s statement — that Young is improving as the year goes on and the hits accumulate.
He threw for 137 yards on Sunday in a game during which he threw the ball 36 times, the most attempts Young has had in more than a month. It’s the sixth straight week that he’s fallen short of 200 yards and the eighth time in 12 starts this season. It’s the third time he hasn’t cleared 150 yards. Two of those games have come in the last four weeks. None of the other eight top picks had more than six sub-200-yard games in their rookie year, and the other eight quarterbacks combined for just nine games of less than 150 yards. You have to go back to Alex Smith, who started seven games as a rookie and never topped 200 yards, to find a top pick who had fewer big passing games. That was in 2005.
“I have tremendous confidence in Bryce,” Tabor said, echoing a refrain from the Panthers’ ever-changing roster of decision-makers all season long.
It might be time that someone had tremendous concern for him.
