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The moment was too big for Bryce Young

January 11, 2026
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The Carolina Panthers were on the brink of the biggest upset of the 2026 NFL Playoffs. Granted, there are still a dozen games left to go, but it’s tough to imagine any other team being a 10.5-point underdog at home going forward.

That’s exactly where Bryce Young landed before a swarming defense, unpredictable special teams play and some inopportune Los Angeles Rams drops left him to wing a seven-yard touchdown pass to Jalen Coker for a 31-27 lead with fewer than three minutes to play. It was a calm, confident moment from one of the league’s most inconsistent quarterbacks. Young made it to the top of the NFC South despite failing to record back-to-back games with a passer rating over 100. He was buttressed by the league’s 23rd-ranked defense. Yet here he was, on the brink of the Panthers’ first playoff win since Cam Newton nearly delivered the franchise a Super Bowl win after the 2015 season.

It wasn’t to be. Matthew Stafford did Matthew Stafford things, elevating Colby Parkinson to temporary star status with a gorgeous sideline throw and lead-taking touchdown. This set the stage for Young to seize his potential and prove he could be the superstar Carolina envisioned after trading away multiple first- and second-round draft picks along with wideout D.J. Moore just for the privilege of drafting him.

Young had 32 seconds and three timeouts trailing 34-31. He needed to gain 35 yards in order to keep the Panthers’ season alive with a long field goal attempt.

He gained zero.

Young was pressured on three straight dropbacks, leading to scrambles and eventual throws to nowhere. On fourth down he delivered a low, catchable strike to rookie Jimmy Horn Jr., a player who finished 2025 with 11 fewer targets than Hunter Renfrow, who played six games. Horn couldn’t corral it. The Rams escaped.

This is the duality of Young. He’s occasionally capable of greatness. When targeting a receiver he trusts, like Tetairoa McMillan or Coker, he thrives. He completed eight passes that traveled more than five yards downfield. All eight were to those two wideouts.

When asked to elevate the rest of the lineup, however, he struggles. That pairing made up 215 of his 264 passing yards Saturday (81 percent). That was always going to be difficult to sustain even with a win. But with his season on the line, Young failed to make the other guys on the depth chart behind them more than just replacement players.

The question now is whether this is a Young flaw or one owned by the Panthers’ roster management. Carolina struck gold with McMillan and Coker has outperformed expectations when healthy in his second season after joining the team as an undrafted rookie. But 2024 first round pick Xavier Legette finished his playoffs with eight receiving yards on four targets; three of those targets came 10-plus yards downfield. None were caught.

The Panthers’ tight ends had 638 total receiving yards this regular season; if you mashed all four of them into one football Voltron he would still have ranked 12th among all players at the position. In the Wild Card round they had three catches for 22 yards, all from Tommy Tremble.

At the same time, Young averaged just 0.02 expected points added (EPA) per dropback. His first quarter interception in Rams territory was the most impactful play, in terms of EPA, in the entire game. It was a promising escape from pressure to climb the pocket before ultimately winging an inaccurate strike to a crowded space in the middle of the field.

Plays like that go a long way in unraveling the goodwill of a third-and-10 touchdown run:

Or a lovely strike on a first-read deep ball:

This is the razor’s edge on which Young walks. He shows enough accuracy and talent to back up his draft credentials. Then he finds a way to give himself just enough space to trip over his own feet. After a season in which the massive extensions signed by flawed playoff quarterbacks like Tua Tagovailoa and Kyler Murray led to their head coaches being ousted with franchises on the hook for meaningful dead salary cap hits, the Panthers have a lot to think about.

Bryce Young is a quarterback you can talk yourself into. Bryce Young is a quarterback you can talk yourself out of. Over the course of 60 chaotic Wild Card minutes he put both on display.

His contract runs for at least one more season and likely two once the Panthers pick up the fifth-year option on his rookie deal. That’s two years to prove he can be better than the guy stuck throwing passes to ghosts with his season in the line Saturday.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: The moment was too big for Bryce Young

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