The first two months of Bryce Young’s NFL career featured a lot more losing than the quarterback was used to at Alabama, but he and the Panthers finally had something to celebrate on Sunday.
Young took the Panthers on a 15-play drive that ate up the final six-plus minutes of the game before Eddy Pineiro kicked a field goal as time expired for a 15-13 win. One of the plays on that drive was a fourth-down completion to Adam Thielen and Young said after the game that he loves “to have a chance to end the game on your terms and to try to go out and take the game.”
Making the most of that opportunity overwhelms a lot of what’s gone wrong through the first seven games of Young’s NFL career.
“Yeah, even though it felt like one win, again, it’s great,” Young said, via the team’s website. “Obviously, we didn’t have to start we wanted. But again, we also understand this is one win. In Week 8. And it’s great, we enjoy it, but it felt like that. We have stuff to clean up, stuff to build on. So we all know that we all understand it. It’s great. Again, these don’t come easy. It was a really good team. So, we definitely respect that, and we celebrate it. It’s good, and then we’re going to get ready to turn the page tomorrow.”
Getting win No. 1 would feel good under any circumstances, but it likely felt all the better after a week of hearing questions about whether the Panthers erred by taking Young ahead of Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud. Stringing together a few more victories would go a long way toward quieting that chatter over the rest of Young’s rookie season.
