Revisiting Panthers' blockbuster trade with Bears to draft Bryce Young: Chicago, Caleb Williams won big
This week, the No. 1 overall picks from the 2023 and 2024 NFL Drafts will be under the bright lights of primetime. Bryce Young and the Panthers open Week 8 with a crucial "Thursday Night Football" game against the Packers , and Caleb Williams and the Bears close out the week with a "Monday Night Football" showdown against the Seahawks . Both quarterbacks will face tough road tests against conference foes with postseason ambitions. And both quarterbacks are forever intertwined. Though Young is forever tied to 2023 No. 2 overall pick C.J. Stroud , and Williams is forever tied to the loaded 2024 class that included Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye , Young and Williams are a byproduct of one another. In March 2023, the Panthers moved heaven and earth to jump from the No. 9 pick to the No. 1 pick, an all-time blockbuster that shaped not only the two franchises but the league as a whole. With Young hoping to get Carolina back on track Thursday, we look back on the trade. The Panthers were one of several teams exploring a trade up for a quarterback, ESPN's Adam Schefter reported at the time . Carolina won out with a huge package. At the time, the Bears were committed to Justin Fields as their starting quarterback, even though they would have had plenty of options in the draft had they chosen that direction: Young, Stroud, Anthony Richardson and Will Levis were considered among the top prospects. But Fields, the No. 11 pick in 2021, had only been in the league two years. The results had been poor, but so, too, were the surroundings. Fields' top receiver in 2022 was Darnell Mooney , who failed to crack 500 receiving yards. Fields, who nearly broke the quarterback rushing record in 2022, would get one more year, and bringing Moore into the equation was crucial for Chicago. He was coming off a down 2022 season but had cracked 1,100 receiving yards each of the three years prior. The Panthers had been a mess ever since David Tepper bought them back in 2018. Tepper fired Ron Rivera midseason in 2019 and hired Matt Rhule in 2020, only to fire Rhule early in the 2022 season. In between, he fired GM Marty Hurney in 2020 and hired Scott Fitterer to fill that role, creating no coach-GM alignment. The Panthers went 29-53 across Tepper's first five years of ownership. They also cycled through quarterbacks after Cam Newton's decline and eventual departure. From 2018-22, Carolina had a different leading passer every season: Newton in 2018, Kyle Allen in 2019, Teddy Bridgewater in 2020, Sam Darnold in 2021 and Baker Mayfield in 2022. When Carolina moved up to No. 1 in 2023, it didn't know who it would take, but it thought the move "gave it the most options," according to Schefter. "Should the Panthers fall in love with a couple of quarterbacks, they would consider trading back a spot or two, according to a league source," a story by ESPN's Courtney Cronin and David Newton read . The Panthers ultimately landed on Young, though later reports said that coach Frank Reich, hired months earlier, preferred Stroud. While Tepper adamantly defended that the entire group was aligned on Young , he also curiously said that wasn't always the expectation. "Originally, we thought we were going to the No. 2 pick, and we thought we'd get C.J.," Tepper said . "We thought the Texans were going to take Bryce. And listen, we preferred Bryce. He was our No. 1 choice. We had a lot of conviction." That mess paled in comparison to the mess playing out on the field in Young's rookie year. Young struggled mightily, and an underwhelming offensive line and receiving corps didn't help. Young took 62 sacks, and his 4.6 net yards per attempt was — and still is — the worst since 2010 Jimmy Clausen . A collection of highly knowledgeable offensive minds — Reich, offensive coordinator Thomas Brown and offensive line coach James Campen — never melded. Reich called plays at the start, turned play-calling duties over Brown, then took them back and then got fired after a 1-11 sta [... truncated ...]
