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The Carolina Panthers opened their 2023 season in Atlanta as new head coach Frank Reich looked to pick up his first win in an opener of his coaching career. After a dominant defensive performance in the first half, the Panthers would take a 10-7 lead on the first drive of the second half thanks to an Eddy Pineiro 43-yard field goal. However, turnovers on the next two drives led to a 10-point swing that gave Atlanta the lead and they never looked back handing the team Panthers a 24-10 loss to begin the season.
Two of the three turnovers came courtesy of rookie starting quarterback Bryce Young in what was a bit of a disappointing debut for him. Young finished the day 20-38 from 146 yards and a touchdown to go along with the two picks, failing to complete a ball that went further than 13 yards in the air.
While this was a pretty rough showing from Young, it shouldn’t have been totally unexpected. Entering Sunday’s game, No. 1 overall quarterbacks are 0-13-1 in their first career start since 2002 and the last eight quarterbacks to be taken with the first pick are 0-7-1 and posted a 33 QBR.
This is a big part of the reason why Jim Szoke, one of the longtime voices of the Panthers, is not worried about Young. “He’s going to learn from a game like this. You hope to overcome the things that go wrong to win the game while he’s still learning, but you gotta begin somewhere. It’s gonna come. He’s gonna be a quick study.”
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