They were the best of teams. They were the worst of teams. Then we reflected on the fact that the Carolina Panthers 34-3 win over the Atlanta Falcons was, pending the results of Monday Night Football, the largest margin of victory in the NFL in Week 2 by a mile and a half and we determined that the Panthers are, at the very least, not the worst of teams. In fact, the 1-1 Panthers have a positive score differential through two weeks in spite of giving up a franchise record number of points in Week 1.
That is true because they played an incredibly inept Falcons offense without a quarterback to speak of and because the offense has largely started out strong in the 2026 season.
That strong start has been keyed by none other than the very much maligned Bryce Young. We’ll detail his rise more later on, but suffice it to say that he is passing the eye test at a level many of us had long since given up on. We’re not ready to crown him as a franchise quarterback, but we will be if he keeps up this pace through the season. Kudos are also due to the management of the team and the defense as a whole. Let’s get into it.
What I liked
The linebackers
Devin Lloyd and Bobby Okereke have transformed this defense from last season. The unit as a whole has a lot of the same problems that it did last season, largely thanks to injuries undoing some of the gains they made through free agency, but one weakness is well on its way out the door. These guys are heads up players who are only going to get more comfortable playing in this scheme and with their new teammates as the season goes on.
Both of them had incredible interceptions that were largely due to their ability to pay attention to the football and make the play in front of them. Lloyd and Okereke shared the team lead with nine tackles on the day. For Lloyd that included one sack, two additional tackles for loss, one additional quarterback hit, three passes deflected, and two interceptions. He returned the second pick 16 yards for a touchdown.
Yes, they did this against Cooper Rush so well that they also got the opportunity to do it against Jack Strand in the same game. Yes, they were picked apart by the same Caleb Williams last week who only managed three points against the Minnesota Vikings in most of four quarters before suffering a severe looking hamstring injury. Like I said, they are only going to get better the more time they have to gel with their new team. This week isn’t their floor so much as a glimpse of a possible ceiling.
It’s a ceiling worthy of the history of Carolina Panthers linebackers. All they have to do is reach it.
The receivers
This is what we wanted to see this year. Tetairoa McMillan had a 100-yard day, Jalen Coker was a reliable, productive target, and Xavier Legette made a positive impact. Sprinkle in a couple targets to running backs and tight ends in appropriate situations, add some broth and a potato and the Panthers look like they got a stew going.
Unlike their offense, the Falcons defense is a real unit made up of professional football players. This was what they did against real competition and it was great. Neither the Falcons nor the Bears are likely to be near the top ten of defenses by the end of the season, but neither unit is laughably bad, either. These were great games to ramp up into the rest of the season.
Question marks abound around Young, Legette, Jonathon Brooks, and the meaning of life, but right now the Panthers have an honest to goodness strength in their wide receiver room and that’s fantastic to see.
Do it again, Bryce.
No player is going to be beloved by their team’s fans when they are acquired via a trade that involves sending away a first overall pick, other high future picks, and a fan favorite wide receiver. Young’s path was further inhibited by awful coaching as a rookie, comparisons to Williams, and his own awful, awful play in the first three years of his career.
The bright side for him has been the coaching and encouragement he has received from head coach Dave Canales and offensive coordinator Brad Idzik. Both of those mentors are young in their own rights and are growing into their current roles at about the same rate that Young is. That is to say that it equally unsurprising that it took a minute to for them to find success together as it was frustrating to watch them struggle along the way.
These past two weeks to open the season have qualified as success for Young and Idzik. Over two games, Young has averaged 324 passing yards, three touchdowns, 0.5 interceptions, a 63% completion rating, and 8.86 yards per attempt. In his career prior to this season, he average 180 passing yards, one touchdown, 0.65 interceptions, and 6 Y/A per game. This season has provided a small sample size so far, but we can only judge off of what he has shown so far.
So far he is throwing the ball further down field, keeping drives alive for longer, getting in scoring position more, and turning the ball over less. Outside of the box score, his pocket presence, movement, vision, general demeanor, and touch have all dramatically improved. Bear with me for one of the biggest “ifs” in the history of the Carolina Panthers.
IF Young can keep this up, IF Young can keep playing at this level then he will be who the Panthers drafted him to be. He will have absolutely spoiled his rookie contract window. From a team building perspective, that’s like shooting yourself in the foot to make sure you can walk in a few years. But compared to where the Panthers were for the six years prior to drafting Young, that seems like fine logic to me.
What’s next?
That all depends on Young. Two games are hardly a trend. Thus we cannot say definitively that Young, Canales, and Idzik have “Arrived”. We can say, however, that so far they are passing the eye test. The little things are adding up in their favor. Play calls are in and Bryce Young is at the line of scrimmage with time to spare. Penalties, like the many we saw in the first quarter of yesterday’s game, aren’t complete drive killers. These are great things that we have now witnessed twice against pretty poor defenses. If we see them again against better defenses, like the Browns and the Lions before the bye-week, then we’ll probably be in for a fun season.
The Panthers offense that showed up the last two weeks at least makes a game out of their next two contests. The Panthers defense that we saw yesterday won’t show up again, but it may look closer to that than who they were against the Bears. Time will tell.
For now, I’m focusing on Young’s statistical improvements to buoy my optimism through the week. Forgive me if this is a little pie in the sky. It’s been a minutes since we got to start the season talking about nice things. so I’m just going to do that until the nice things go away and we have to spend weeks on end cursing the Kellen Moore/Tyler Shough Saints.
Let’s go back to what we were talking about after the preseason. The Carolina Panthers were traditionally a team to start the season slowly under Bryce Young and Dave Canales. By all accounts, that’s not what we’ve seen so far. Let’s look at Young’s average first two games of the season:
153 more yards per game. Two more touchdowns per game. A 5% improvement isn’t exactly world changing, but the nature of his passes have changed. 4.23 more yards gained per pass attempt show a more aggressive passer. Combine that with a higher completion percentage and we have an offense that is moving the ball.
We’ve cautioned all the way that we don’t know if this Bryce is a real boy or just an early season figment of our collective optimism. That is true. But there is another question lingering in this data that I’m going to ask just for fun:
What if Young’s season trajectory hasn’t changed? Right now Bryce Young is a top five passer, statistically speaking, in the NFL. What if this is his slow start to 2026?
