Dave Canales and the Carolina Panthers had no choice.

The eight months leading up to the Carolina Panthers’ 2024 season opener were filled with unbridled optimism. Optimism that things would be different from the disastrous Class of 2023. Optimism that Dave Canales could save the Panthers’ struggling franchise quarterback, the one they’d staked their future on. Optimism that things would finally start to improve after six years of futile attempts to play football in Charlotte.

The buzz around training camp was filled with rainbows and butterflies. Canales would let Young play wild and free. The quarterback had regained the confidence in his talents that had eluded him at one point during the Reich era. Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis were the perfect, hand-picked additions to a leaky interior offensive line. Diontae Johnson and Xavier Legette brought field-tilt skills to a depleted battalion of perimeter weapons.

The optimism that prevailed in the months of January through September quickly gave way to the familiar gloomy feeling that the Panthers football club has been inspiring among its fans for almost a decade.

The Bryce Young era came like a lion. The audacious trade with the Bears that landed the No. 1 overall pick in Charlotte. The unwavering confidence Carolina had their man despite C.J. Stroud’s Rookie of the Year campaign. The fact that Young’s reckless, off-script skills that won Tuscaloosa a Heisman Trophy were coming to Charlotte had people inside the organization finally, for the first time in the post-COVID NFL era, excited about the future.

Wow wow.

The Bryce Young era came like a lion and left like a lamb. On an innocent, rainy Monday afternoon after a tough loss to a more talented team that has become the norm on Mint Street. Bryce Young has officially been benched for veteran quarterback Andy Dalton, and it is undeniably the right decision by Dave Canales and his staff. Bryce Young has utterly failed to move the offense to the next field. Plain and simple. And for a regime that was in a state of rethinking early in its tenure, veteran backup-turned-starter Andy Dalton gives the team the best chance to figure out which of the 51 non-quarterbacks on the roster are worth investing in.

Evaluation is the name of the game for Canales and his staff going forward. Does Andy Dalton give the Panthers a better chance to win games than Bryce Young? Absolutely. If nothing else, Dalton will be standing up in the pocket and throwing downfield, something Young was unwilling to do early in his career.

However, the roster Dalton will lead onto the field is still short on talent. Expecting Dalton to lead a playoff push is naive. Expecting Dalton to give guys like Xavier Legette, Ja’Tavion Sanders, Jonathan Mingo and Diontae Johnson chances to make plays on the ball is the bare minimum. An expectation Bryce Young failed to live up to.

2025 will likely bring another long-term starting quarterback to Charlotte. Whether it’s via the draft, free agency, or trade, neither Dalton nor Young should be starting in week one of 2025. The biggest task for Dave Canales from now until next September is to figure out which players on the roster will still be there in week one of 2025.

Are there inexperienced defenders (think Trevin Wallace, Eku Leota, DJ Johnson, etc.) who need further development? What does the offense have in its trio of rookie skill position players? Can Ikem Ekwonu (who had perhaps the best game of his young career on Sunday) anchor the blindside? These are the burning questions that deserve answers, and Andy Dalton gives Canales the best chance to find them.

During Canales’ opening press conference, he indicated that he wanted to make Bryce Young one of 11 players in a unified offense. He immediately took the pressure off the beleaguered quarterback and promised to build a solid team around him so he wouldn’t have to cosplay as Superman every week.

Canales and general manager Dan Morgan were successful in that endeavor. The Panthers’ rebuilt offensive line performed among the league’s best for two weeks. The new weapons found space in the secondary. Bryce Young failed to capitalize on the improved environment, and now he gets the chance to see a 13-year veteran take the reins of the improved outfit.

For the other 51 players on the roster, the move to Dalton is a reprieve. It’s impossible to imagine how demoralizing it is for an offense to step onto the field with so much confidence in its waning signal-caller. And for a defense already disadvantaged by the midseason talent drain? It got to the point Sunday afternoon that they barely had a chance to remove their helmets and talk to their position coaches before they were pummeled time and time again by J.K. Dobbins and the Chargers’ relentless rushing attack.

From here, with Dalton under center, the Carolina Panthers are going to play better football. It probably won’t lead to wins. It certainly won’t lead to the playoffs. But it will give Canales and Dan Morgan a clearer picture of what the future holds for Carolina Panthers football. And for fans of the team who have been staring at a jumble of tarot cards trying to figure out what’s next on Mint Street, the clean slate in the building that ultimately results from this decision will be a welcome sight.

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