Certain numbers don’t always tell the entire story in the NFL, even when it comes to this season’s emergence of Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young.
While your eyes should tell you that he’s undoubtedly turned a corner in 2024, the box score will tell you that he passed for just 195.8 yards per game and only 15 touchdowns.
But we’ve stumbled upon some numbers that do tell the feel-good story for the former No. 1 overall pick.
Here are eight mind-blowing stats from Young’s breakout showing:
Young finished up his campaign on a three-game tear—capped off by his five-touchdown performance from the victorious season finale in Atlanta. He also, in what may have been inspired by his four-turnover dud against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 15, didn’t give the ball away once in that span.
He led all quarterbacks, from Weeks 16 to 18, in touchdown-to-turnover ratio:
1. Bryce Young: 10-0
2. Bo Nix: 9-1
3. Lamar Jackson: 8-1
4. Justin Herbert: 7-1
5. Baker Mayfield: 9-2
After previous starter Andy Dalton injured his right thumb in a car accident, the Panthers gave Young what seemed to be a spot-start in Week 8 against the Denver Broncos. But he took that opportunity and never gave it back, as that outing would prove to be the first of his 10 starts to close out the campaign.
Over the final 11 weeks of the season, Young was given an 83.7 passing grade from Pro Football Focus—the seventh-highest amongst all quarterbacks with at least 250 dropbacks in that span:
1. Justin Herbert: 92.7
2. Joe Burrow: 92.4
3. Lamar Jackson: 91.7
4. Josh Allen: 86.2
5. Jared Goff: 84.0
6. Bryce Young: 83.7
7. Baker Mayfield: 83.3
8. Sam Darnold: 82.3
9. Geno Smith: 81.2
10. Jordan Love: 81.0
Big-time throws—another signature stat from PFF—are “high difficulty, high-value” passes. As described by PFF themselves, it’s a pass with “excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field and/or into a tighter window.”
Young, since his Week 8 return, tied for the league-lead along with Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow:
1. Bryce Young: 26
1. Joe Burrow: 26
3. Justin Herbert: 25
4. Josh Allen: 22
5. Sam Darnold: 22
If we break it down by big-time throw percentage, no one—not even Most Valuable Player favorites Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen—touch Bryce:
1. Bryce Young: 7.7 percent
2. Lamar Jackson: 7.2 percent
3. Josh Allen: 6.9 percent
4. Justin Herbert: 6.8 percent
5. Russell Wilson: 5.9 percent
It’s not particularly easy to throw your pass catchers open when they’re stuck in tight windows. But no quarterback this season did that at a higher rate than Young:
This will be the first of our four grabs from Steven Patton, host of the Purrfect Takes podcast. So a big hat tip goes out to him for these beauties.
We’ll start with another stat that exhibits Young’s ability to beat tight coverage:
If we tighten this field up to quarterbacks with at least 20 attempts of tight-window passes thrown in the red zone, Young ranks fifth:
1. Jordan Love: 50 percent
2. Brock Purdy: 44.8 percent
3. Kirk Cousins: 43.4 percent
4. Bo Nix: 42.9 percent
5. Bryce Young: 40.7 percent
Oh hey, he can throw deep, too.
Much was made about Young’s lack of long balls throughout his rookie season. Well, it turns out he’s awfully efficient at chucking the rock on 20+ air yards:
Before their near-upset of the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 14, head coach Dave Canales praised Young for always trying to find the winning play. Here’s what he told reporters back on Dec. 4:
“Sometimes, it’s that on-time completion. Sometimes, it’s the off-schedule play. Sometimes, it’s the throwaway. Sometimes, it’s a sack—end the play with the ball, they got us. So there’s different ways to win the down so that we can have opportunities. And he’s just doing a really great job of being decisive.”
This is what Canales was talking about:
Those rankings look a little sexier when we squeeze them up to quarterbacks with at least 400 dropbacks:
1. Bryce Young: 4.54 percent
2. Josh Allen: 5.33 percent
3. Lamar Jackson: 5.47 percent
4. Aaron Rodgers: 5.61 percent
5. Jared Goff: 5.86 percent
Some may argue that sacks are a quarterback stat, especially if you watched this year’s No. 1 overall pick.
But not for Young, who doesn’t cause too many of his own takedowns:
If we were to limit this stat to quarterbacks with at least 300 dropbacks, Young is tied for the third-best mark:
1. Drake Maye: 8.8 percent
2. Jameis Winston: 12.5 percent
3. Bryce Young: 17.2 percent
3. Daniel Jones: 17.2 percent
5. Derek Carr: 25.0 percent
