Bryce Young has put himself in rare company, and the list is a short one: Aaron Rodgers, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees.
That’s the level of production Young has reached through the first five games of this season. Since 2011, he’s one of only four quarterbacks in NFL history to post at least 280 passing yards and one passing touchdown in each of his team’s first five games of a season.
Rodgers did it in 2011. Manning and Brees did it in 2013.
Young’s latest step forward came in Carolina’s Week 6 win over the Philadelphia Eagles, when he threw for 281 yards and two touchdowns in a 3-2 start. It also pushed him to 11 passing touchdowns through five games, a new Panthers franchise record. Not even Cam Newton hit that mark during his MVP season.
The numbers keep stacking up. Young has 1,549 passing yards, 11 passing touchdowns, 25 rushing yards and one rushing touchdown, with only two interceptions. He also leads the NFL in passing yards per game at 309.8.
Carolina’s offense has followed his lead. With Young and Tetairoa McMillan driving the attack, the Panthers are averaging 29.2 points per game, which ranks fourth in the NFL. McMillan, the 2025 Offensive Rookie of the Year, has 32 catches for 471 yards and two touchdowns in five games.
The Panthers’ season has had its swings, but the results have lined up around Young’s play. They opened with a loss to the Chicago Bears, beat the Atlanta Falcons in Week 2, fell to the Cleveland Browns in Week 3, then knocked off the Detroit Lions on Sunday Night Football in Week 4 before beating the Eagles coming out of the bye.
Young’s rebound has been one of the league’s more striking turnarounds. He was benched for Andy Dalton in 2024, a move that led plenty of people to believe his run in Carolina might be over. Instead, he led the Panthers to the playoffs last season, where they lost to the Los Angeles Rams in a wild-card game at home.
Now the financial picture is getting interesting, too. Young is playing this season on $12.1 million in the fourth year of his rookie deal, and Carolina already picked up his fifth-year option, which is worth a guaranteed $25.9 million. The Panthers did not sign him to an extension, so he’ll need to keep this level going if he wants to earn one next offseason.
That makes the stretch ahead meaningful, starting with next week’s matchup against the 1-5 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Young enters that game with 9,840 career passing yards, 60 career touchdown passes and a 17-32-0 record as Carolina’s starter.
For a quarterback whose future looked shaky not long ago, the arc has changed fast. If Young keeps this up and the Panthers get back to the playoffs, the extension conversation should take care of itself. It took some time, but he’s starting to look every bit like a franchise quarterback.
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Panthers Just Put Together The Kind Of Start Fans Haven't Seen
A win over the Eagles came with a little bit of history attached, and for Carolina, it was the kind of day that hinted at something sturdier than a one-week surge. Bryce Young kept the offense humming by becoming the first Panthers quarterback to post at least 250 passing yards and a touchdown pass in seven straight games, while the unit as a whole reached a team-record 146 points through five games. It was the sort of start fans around here have been waiting to see, with milestones piling up as the season gets moving.
Tetairoa McMillan also found himself in the record book by tying for second-fastest to 100 receptions in team history, Ryan Fitzgerald stayed perfect on his first 10 field goal attempts of the season, and JJ Jansen added another line to an already long rsum by setting the NFL record for most games played by a long snapper. Even so, the afternoon was hardly flawless, since Carolina also set a team record for penalty yardage in a single game, a reminder that this group is still sorting out just how good it can be. [Read more 🡒]