Derrick Brown: People don’t want to admit how wrong they were about Bryce Young
· Yahoo Sports
The Panthers made the postseason for the first time since 2017 last season, winning the NFC South via a tiebreaker with an 8-9 record.
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Importantly, it was also the first time the club had made the playoffs with quarterback Bryce Young.
Young, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 draft, put together his best season so far in 2025, completing 63.6 percent of his passes for 3,011 yards with 23 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He also rushed for 216 yards with a pair of TDs.
That’s enough for defensive tackle Derrick Brown — Carolina’s first-round pick back in 2020 — to call out the naysayers in an interview on Chris Long’s Green Light podcast.
“He's our guy," Brown said, via NFL.com. "We ride with [No.] 9 all the way through. That's one of those things that people don't want to admit how good he's becoming because they're going to have to go back and admit how wrong they were. As we all know, people don't like doing that.”
While Young started 16 games in his first season, he was benched after two particularly poor games to start his second year — completing just 31-of-56 passes for 245 yards with three interceptions while taking six sacks. But when Andy Dalton was unable to play due to injury a few weeks later, Youn came back in and didn’t give the starting role back up.
The way Young handled that situation left an impression on Young.
"He took the benching and, man, he just came into work every single day and killed it," Brown said. "He didn't care. He went right back to doing what he does. To him, it was about playing football.
“I'm going to be honest, I know everybody's got an opinion about him, but I would never want to be a quarterback in the NFL. It might be the worst job to have. It's the highest-paying, but it is the worst job to have in the NFL. I salute Bryce every single day, just dealing with all the outside noise and then still being able to come in there and be efficient in the work.”
The Panthers picked up Young’s fifth-year option, setting him up to make a guaranteed salary of $25.904 million in 2027. That’s a bargain as far as the going rate for a starting quarterback. But the team and Young will have to figure out a rate that works for both if he’s going to be on the team for 2028 and beyond. Much of that may depend on how Young and the team perform in 2026.