Dynasty Fantasy Football Thoughts: Will Bryce Young Turn Things Around, Or Should You Try to Move Him?

Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young was the first overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. When you are the first pick of a draft, you are expected to come in and instantly turn the fortunes of the organization around. That hasn’t happened through the first half of the season with Young.

If you decided to draft Young in your dynasty league, what should your next move be? Do you hold out hope that Young figures things out, or do you try to trade him while his value is still somewhat high?

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Young’s Season So Far

Young has played in eight of the team’s nine contests so far this season. He missed week 3 with an injury.

The first overall pick has completed 182-of-290 passes, which is a completion percentage of 62.76%. He’s thrown eight touchdowns and seven interceptions.

Young has not topped 250 passing yards in any contest. He’s reached 200 yards in half of his games.

In Thursday night’s loss to the Chicago Bears and their below-average defense, Young failed to throw a touchdown for the second time. It was the fifth game he’s gone without throwing an interception in.

Young was sacked three times against Chicago, marking the sixth time he’s been sacked three or more times in a contest. Some of that is on the offensive line, of course.

He’s rushed for 135 yards on 20 attempts this season, but it hasn’t been a consistent part of his game yet. He’s topped 30 rushing yards two different times.

Along with three multi-interception games, Young has fumbled four times. He’s lost two of those.

Young’s Fantasy Outlook

As much as people want Young to be benched or to call him a bust, when you are talking about a rookie quarterback - and many quarterbacks for that matter - their play is impacted positively or negatively by the players around them.

When you’re asked to name a few good offensive players from the Panthers, many would struggle just to come up with three.

The team’s best offensive player this season is a 33-year-old Adam Thielen. He’s the only skill player to top 500 scrimmage yards so far. 

Outside of Thielen, the team’s skill players just simply aren’t that special.

Miles Sanders was brought in to be a difference maker for the Panthers’ offense, but he lost his starting running back job to Chuba Hubbard. 

D.J. Chark and Jonathan Mingo are the No. 2 and 3 wideouts, but neither have reached 250 receiving yards yet. Chark missed his second game of the season in week 10, and Mingo has really only produced two decent games in his rookie season.

Tight end Hayden Hurst caught five passes for 41 yards and a touchdown in week 1, but has finished below that catch total in every week since, only has topped 41 receiving yards once (while not hitting 25 yards in any other game) and hasn’t scored again.

The 32 sacks allowed are now tied for the third most in the league this season. Poor offensive line play hasn’t allowed the ground game to do much, so that’s putting a lot of extra pressure on Young.

People like to compare Young with Houston Texans’ C.J. Stroud, as Stroud was the pick after Young. The biggest difference between the two rookie quarterbacks is that Stroud has only been sacked 18 times. 

Like Young, Stroud isn’t getting any help from his running game, but he’s got several options (Nico Collins, Tank Dell, Dalton Schultz, Noah Brown, Robert Woods) in the passing game. That’s helped Stroud throw for 2,270 yards, 14 touchdowns and only one interception.

Has Stroud been better than Young so far? Absolutely. But I also think Stroud has much better players around him.

How to Proceed with Young

With my thinking that Young simply needs some help around him, I’m comfortable holding out hope with Young. If you’re expecting him to be even an average quarterback the rest of the way, that just doesn’t seem likely. I wouldn’t be shocked if the Panthers eventually bench Young.

If your league is a deeper one and Young was your best quarterback option for the season, there’s a pretty good chance that your fantasy team is not a very good one. That means you are probably in line for another top-end draft pick for next season, so you’ll likely have the chance to get a guy like Caleb Williams or Drake Maye. You can take one of those two guys if you aren’t sold on Young, which you shouldn’t be.

If Young was your backup this season and you have another quarterback that should be around for several more seasons, then I would see what kind of trade offers are out there for Young. Maybe a team with a veteran quarterback tries to nab Young for a future possible option. Maybe a team destined for a rebuild takes a shot on Young.

Young definitely isn’t going to net you a return as solid as a top pick in a draft would, but in a dynasty format, Young still holds quite a bit of value, and you can either retool for the future or take on an average fantasy quarterback for a possible playoff push.

So while I personally would hold out hope on Young and think he could be an above-average quarterback some day with some weapons around him, I can also understand wanting to move on now, in case things never improve. After all, the Panthers don’t own their first-round pick for 2024, so it might be a couple years until Young has some decent talent around him.