Bryce Young will not play a snap in Thursday night’s Pro Football Hall of Fame Game. The Panthers made the call to sit their starting quarterback for the annual preseason opener against the Arizona Cardinals, which is the correct decision and also a reminder that NFL preseason is essentially made-for-TV filler.
Young is coming off a 2025 season that stabilized his career in Carolina. After a disastrous rookie year in 2023 and a benching-then-comeback stretch in 2024, Young finished 2025 with respectable numbers under Dave Canales’ offense and gave the Panthers real hope going into 2026. The last thing the franchise needs is a random preseason injury derailing that momentum.
Carolina is not the only team playing it safe. Cardinals rookie Jeremiyah Love, the number three overall pick, will also sit. Both teams will trot out backups and roster hopefuls looking to make final rosters. That is basically what preseason opener is for.
The player worth watching is Carson Beck. The Cardinals are bringing him along as a project quarterback, and this will be his first NFL action in a jersey that counts, kind of. Beck was a college star at Georgia and Miami before ending up in Arizona, and preseason snaps against real defensive competition are exactly the developmental reps he needs.
Bills safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson also returned to practice this week after a leg injury scare, which is unrelated to Thursday night’s game but part of the wave of small-scale training camp news that dominates the first week of August.
The bigger picture on the Panthers is that Bryce Young is finally in a stable situation. Canales returns for year three as offensive coordinator now that head coach Ejiro Evero took over as head coach. Continuity for a quarterback who has had none of it in the NFL matters.
Young has weapons around him too. Xavier Legette entered year three as a legitimate downfield threat. Chuba Hubbard is coming off a 1,200-yard rushing season. The offensive line, while not elite, is at least functional.
The Panthers are still not a playoff team on paper. The NFC South is deeper than it has been in years, and Carolina has significant defensive question marks that were not solved in the offseason. But this is no longer a franchise where the quarterback situation is broken, and that is a real step forward.
Thursday night is about roster evaluation and TV entertainment. Look for the third-string cornerbacks to make plays that will get them cut in three weeks. Watch the sixth-round rookie linebackers hit each other. Enjoy the football because it is the first real NFL action since the Super Bowl.
Just do not expect to learn anything about the actual 2026 Panthers. That show starts in September.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
