Yahoo Sports fantasy analysts Matt Harmon and Andy Behrens discuss the Panthers quarterback’s impressive ending to the season – after being benched earlier in the year – and whether it means he could be a viable option for fantasy managers next season. Hear the full conversation on the “Yahoo Fantasy Forecast” podcast – and subscribe on , , or
Ok, give me your second thing that you care about from week 18.
Yeah, it’s Bryce Young, man.
Um, he, Bryce Young elevating himself like legitimately into the 2025 fantasy conversation and not, not in a fringe kind of way, but like in a, is Bryce Young a Bryce Young a top 10, top 12 fantasy quarterback in 2025?
Um, like I just, I just, I didn’t think we’d get here, um, you’re kind of here, um, number one.
I don’t, I don’t think he’s ever going to have a receiving corre this bad again.
Um, and not, not to say that some people didn’t play well, but like the best thing he had going for him was, um, I don’t even know, was it Adam, I guess it was Adam Thielen, like the, you know, Adam Thielen not being complete dust at this stage of his career was good.
Deon was fine.
Um, but like, I don’t know, we got, we got developmental young players on the field.
We got, you know, nobody that nobody that significantly stresses a defense.
And Bryce Young’s transformation from September to January, I mean, was just wild.
The idea that, you know, we have Bryce Young throwing like look away, Steph Curry um touchdown passes in week 18 is just if you would have told any of us that.
In September, even ahead of the, the benching, I, I mean, just no way.
Um, yeah, a lot of wild things happen in the NFL and we, we always caution you at the beginning of the season, get ready for, you know, get ready for some things that you never could have imagined.
I like, I continually, even though I know that, um, this one, this one has really surprised me, um, because, you know, as we as we talked about months ago, it, it looked like Bryce Young was guessing in in September, insofar as it’s possible for an NFL quarterback to look like he’s playing defense like almost that was Bryce Young, right?
He was just purely reacting.
It was, it was, you know, he seemed flummoxed all the time.
Um, and just absolutely in command in the, in the final like 3 or 4 weeks of this season, and then it finally began to translate, you know, he had some games maybe a month and a half ago where like maybe it didn’t show up in terms of fantasy output, but he, he really looked in command and he looked like he was really orchestrating things and he looked, he looked comfortable and he was making, you know, he was making plays in, in sort of chaos situations.
But then in these last, in these last 3 games, um, 7 touchdown passes, 0 interceptions, 3 rushing touchdown like all of a sudden we got, we got Bryce Young is like a legit rushing threat.
Um, he’s got, he’s got 5 rushing scores over his last over his last 6 games.
I I haven’t, I haven’t ranked quarterbacks for 2025 yet.
I don’t even want to think about it yet, but I, I don’t know who’s been better over the last month, not 10 guys.
You made a perfect point there, which was You could not have given me 1000 guesses, like 1000 tries to guess that Bryce Young in week 18 of the 2024 NFL season would be doing the, the Steph Curry lookaway, throwing a touchdown because he’s playing with that much confidence now because he was a completely confidence bereft player in the first two weeks of the season.
I can’t wait to read pieces about like, What was the process when Bryce Young was benched?
I’ve heard, you know, Dan Morgan, the general manager, former Panthers player, was really a part of like building Bryce back up during this period.
Uh, I wanna know like what was he doing?
What was Dave Canalas doing?
You know, Dave Canalas said after the game.
Like we know Bryce is our quarterback, and that gives us just so much more freedom going into the offseason and so much clarity about like, what we need to do in free agency.
So, yeah, I mean, Panthers are definitely a team to watch.
I think from a fantasy perspective, they will, there will be some interesting sleepers there.
Definitely, I think they’re a team on the rise.
