Bryce Young has shown steady improvement over each of the last two seasons versus his first year in the league.
It’s been encouraging to see him learn from past mistakes and get better over time. But his performance, and the Panthers’ passing game during that time, still didn’t have enough juice to truly compete with the rest of the NFL.
As I wrote in previewing the Panthers this offseason:
“The steady improvement is nice, but at some point, Young and the passing game need to make a bigger jump. He has some high level traits from a mental and processing standpoint, so a big leap is possible at any moment.”
Through the first two weeks of this season, we’ve seen that much-needed big leap.
The Panthers’ passing game has been humming and Bryce Young has been executing at an extremely high level.
Entering Week 3, Young ranks 2nd amongst all quarterbacks in passing yards, 20+ yard completions, and 40+ yard completions. That’s the explosiveness Carolina has been lacking over the last several years.
Last week against the Falcons, the combination of the Panthers’ approach and Young’s execution led to a stellar performance through the air.
With Carolina’s O-line a huge question mark entering the season, they’ve leaned on play-action to give Young more time in the pocket and to give their receivers’ routes time to develop downfield.
Young has the 2nd-most yards off of play action this season (225), and three of the Panthers’ five 20-yard completions against Atlanta came off of play-action.
I love what they did on this first play. Out of shotgun, they used a mini-boot or boot-stop to the left. Given Young’s action, and the initial stems of Panthers receivers, this appeared to be a boot to the left:
But take a look at all 3 of those receivers running vertical routes. They all cut back to the right almost perfectly in sync:
The action got the back-side safety to start cheating towards the middle, and that opened things up for Tet McMillan’s bend-back route:
Young turned back at the right time and delivered a strike:
That’s a beautifully designed and executed play that got the Panthers’ passing game going:
The use of play-action throughout the afternoon gave Young time to both process coverage and even manipulate defenders.
Check out this 27-yard completion in the 2nd quarter. Similar to that first play, Young looked like he was about to boot in one direction before stopping and throwing in the other: