Did David Tepper force the Panthers' QB change? Why I don't buy it

(Editor’s note: This is excerpted from Mike Sando’s Pick Six of Sept. 23, 2024.)

Andy Dalton passing for 319 yards and three touchdowns in a 36-22 road victory over the Las Vegas Raiders showed emphatically why the Carolina Panthers benched Bryce Young after their 0-2 start.

People really thought Carolina acted prematurely when they sent Young to the sideline?

Team owner David Tepper has earned his reputation by driving ill-fated decision after ill-fated decision. But I’m not buying the widely circulated assumption that he — and not head coach Dave Canales — drove the decision to bench Young. It doesn’t make sense for the two most important reasons:

• Young’s tape through two games was so bad that it should have taken intervention from ownership to keep him in the lineup. An opposing coach who has studied the Panthers called Young’s play “depressing for the franchise” while echoing anonymous player comments suggesting Young has not improved.

• Tepper drove the decision to select Young, amid rumblings that then-coach Frank Reich preferred C.J. Stroud. Why would Young’s top advocate, Tepper, lead the charge to bench his hand-picked QB? Tepper’s history suggests he would be more inclined to ask tough questions of the coaches and team builders.

“I think this was the football guys saying, ‘What else can we do? At least we can run an offense with Andy Dalton,’” an exec from another team said.

Assuming the decision was indeed Canales’, he clearly made the right one.

GO DEEPER

In delivering Panthers’ stunning win over Raiders, Andy Dalton validated Dave Canales’ decision

(Photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)