Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young provided us with one of the very best stories of the 2024 campaign. But was it, by rule, a comeback story?
The finalists for the Associated Press’ Comeback Player of the Year award were officially announced on Thursday morning. This season’s group includes five notable nominees—Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold, Los Angeles Chargers running back J.K. Dobbins, New England Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez and Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin.
What—or who—that group didn’t include, however, was Young.
Why?
Didn’t he make a successful comeback of his own?
Um, yeah—he most certainly did.
After a relatively disappointing rookie year, the 2023 No. 1 overall pick entered 2024 with a bit of buzz and a whole lot of optimism. The Panthers paired him with a “quarterback whisperer” in first-year head coach Dave Canales, hooked him up with two new starting guards and three offensive weapons through the draft and apparently saw the much-anticipated growth begin throughout the spring and summer.
That progress, unfortunately, wouldn’t show up to start the regular season. In fact, Young regressed.
Young turned in the worst two games of his short NFL career in Weeks 1 and 2—passing for just 245 yards, no touchdowns and three interceptions while leading Carolina to all of 13 points and two third-down conversions. Those alarming performances, needless to say, came in a pair of humiliating blowout losses.
His disturbingly poor play to kick off the campaign then led to one of the most shocking moves in the recent history of the franchise—his benching. Young, after those two offerings, was sat in favor of 14th-year veteran Andy Dalton—who proceeded to guide the Panthers to a 36-22 win in his very first start of the season.
As the weeks piled up, rumblings of an early divorce between Young and the Panthers stewed. And considering the organization parted with a king’s ransom to select him atop the draft a year earlier, a swift parting of ways may have solidified that gamble as the worst (and most embarrassing) trade in NFL history.
But that’s not how this story ended.
Thanks to an unforeseen setback to Dalton, who sprained his right thumb in a car accident after Week 7, Young was reinserted into the starting lineup for Week 8. From then on, he wouldn’t look back.
The 23-year-old not only (and finally) realized some growth, but he took a step forward seemingly every single time out.
Young pieced together an impressive 10-game run—completing 61.8 percent of his passing attempts for 2,104 yards and amassing 20 total touchdowns and just six interceptions while pushing the Panthers to a pretty respectable 4-6 mark. That stretch, additionally, included near-upsets (in back-to-back-to-back weeks) of the Philadelphia Eagles, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs—two of which are currently on the doorstep of Super Bowl LIX.
By year’s end, Young went from taking outside hits as one of the biggest “busts” of all-time to receiving praise from a who’s who of Carolina’s inner circle—including from his head coach, the team owner and the greatest quarterback in Panthers history.
(Heck, he even earned himself one of the hardest nicknames in the game during the process.)
So, yeah, wouldn’t that qualify as a comeback?
Well, not according to the overseers of the Comeback Player of the Year award.
After some confusion regarding the win of then-Indianapolis Colts quarterback Joe Flacco last year, AP senior NFL writer Rob Maaddi provided the following explanation of the honor’s guidelines:
The spirit of the AP Comeback Player of the Year award is to honor a player who has demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity by overcoming illness, physical injury or other circumstances that led him to miss playing time the previous season. The decision to provide this guidance was made last December but could not be implemented for the 2023 awards because the season was almost completed.
In short, the player must be returning from a setback and absence in the previous season. Young started in all but one game in 2023.
So, by that very definition, he does not qualify for the award.
Now, we could nitpick at the qualifications for some of the 2024 finalists—including our old friend Sam.
Darnold missed games last year, but only because he wasn’t good enough to start over Brock Purdy in San Francisco.
He was healthy. He was the backup. There was no setback.
He did not overcome an “illness,” a “physical injury” or any another adverse circumstance.
If Darnold can come back from (for a lack of a better term) “sucking,” then why can’t Young—who astonishingly zoomed through the comeback cycle within a single season?
Who knows? Maybe we’ll get another confusing explanation about the guidelines if Darnold wins.
But what we do know is that this award won’t define Young’s refreshed future in Carolina. While it would have been a nice little piece of recognition for his remarkable bounce-back, a nomination doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme.
If Young’s 2024 season has taught us anything, it’s that we should be looking forward, and not back. His resurgence is just one story in one chapter of what may be one hell of a book.
And hey, for those who are still hung up about it—there’s always next year.
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