“He had to be outside of his comfort zone,” Adam Thielen opens up on Bryce Young’s Panthers climb

Adam Thielen has known Bryce Young in the two versions that have defined the quarterback’s short NFL life so far. the overwhelmed rookie trying to survive a collapsing offense, and the starter Carolina is now moving to secure beyond 2026. Thielen caught 139 passes from Young before the Panthers traded him back to Minnesota in August 2025.

Panthers general manager Dan Morgan said on April 14 that the club plans to exercise Young’s fifth-year option after the draft, a move that would lock in a guaranteed $26.5 million for 2027. That update arrived after Young’s best professional season and after Carolina spent the offseason behaving like a team building around its quarterback rather than hedging against him.

That was not the climate around Young a year ago. He opened his career with a 2-14 rookie record as a starter, then lost his job two games into the 2024 season when Dave Canales turned to Andy Dalton after an 0-2 start. Carolina’s handling of the position looked unsettled then, and the questions around the former No. 1 pick had become louder than the answers.

Now the backdrop is entirely different. Young threw for 3,011 yards and 23 touchdowns in 2025, both career highs, and led the Panthers to their first NFC South title in a decade before a 34-31 wild-card loss to the Rams. That is the football setting around Thielen’s remarks: not a quarterback still stuck in the first chapter, but one entering another draft with Carolina arranging the roster around him.

1. Adam Thielen Reveals Bryce Young’s Secret

Thielen’s comments surfaced in a clip from the Ross Tucker podcast, where he described a quarterback whose routine changed over time. He said, “I’m not gonna share too much detail … but he just really realized after year one, year two, he had to be someone who maybe isn’t the normal day to day Bryce Young …” Tucker continued, “He had to kind of be outside of his comfort zone to really benefit the team … That’s someone who cares and wants to do WHATEVER it takes to help the team win …” That matched the way Thielen had spoken about Young before. In March 2024, he said “everything was stacked against” the quarterback during his rookie year. By July 2024, he was saying the adversity had made Young “a stronger leader.”

2. The Mid-Season Crisis That Forged Bryce Young’s Grit

Young entered the league carrying the cost of a franchise-altering trade and walked into a rookie season that never settled. After the 2023 season Carolina went 2-14 in his starts. Reich was fired after 11 games, and the offense never found a stable rhythm around the top pick. The year was later summarized by leading media houses as one in which nearly everything around Young was working against him. Carolina’s answer was a coaching reset. The Panthers hired Canales to rebuild the offense and, more specifically, to rebuild the quarterback’s path. But the start of 2024 only deepened the turbulence. After two games, the Panthers benched Young for Dalton, and the decision proved to be one of the defining early turns of the season. That move forced the franchise to confront a reality it had hoped to avoid so soon after drafting Young. Development was no longer a private process. It was happening in public, with the quarterback learning from the sideline and running scout team while Dalton took over. In October 2024 that Young had spent five weeks waiting and learning before getting another chance to reclaim the starting job. By late November, the tone had changed. Canales said that Young would “absolutely” remain the starter after a tight loss to Kansas City, an indication that Carolina had seen enough to stop toggling the position week to week. That vote of confidence came after the most fragile stretch of Young’s career and before the full rebound had been reflected in standings or totals. That is the portion of the quarterback’s story Thielen knows best. He was present for the rookie year under Reich, present for the first weeks of Canales’ tenure, present for the benching, and present for the part of the season when Young began clawing his way back into the Panthers’ longer-term plans.

3. Bryce Young’s $26.5M Breakthrough Secures Panthers’ Future and NFC South Glory

Young’s third year gave the Panthers the season they had been searching for when they traded to draft him. He completed 63.6 percent of his passes for 3,011 yards and 23 touchdowns in 2025, all career highs, while leading Carolina to its first NFC South title in 10 years. The playoff loss to the Rams ended the run, but it did not change the direction of the franchise’s quarterback decision. The rebound was not simply statistical. ESPN called it a “super pivotal year” for both Young and the Panthers, and that reflected how much of Carolina’s future still hinged on whether the late-2024 progress would hold. By January, it had. In January Morgan confirmed the club was picking up Young’s fifth-year option after the quarterback’s breakthrough season. Carolina was no longer fielding questions about whether it had to reconsider the 2023 pick. It was planning around a quarterback under team control through at least 2027, with room for a longer extension if the growth continues. Panthers said last week that the team had put “all of their support” behind Young over the past year. The quarterback room also reflects that shift. Carolina signed Kenny Pickett to a one-year deal after trading Andy Dalton to Philadelphia, a move framed around getting younger behind Young rather than challenging him for the starting role. Morgan said at the combine that Carolina wanted to develop a young quarterback room. This is a different football operation from the one that benched Young in Week 3 of the 2024 season. The Panthers still have holes, but they are working from a quarterback answer rather than searching for one. That is the strongest evidence of how far Young has moved in two years. Carolina’s offseason is now being organized around him.

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