Bryce Young Camp Update — August 31: Panthers On SI Charts Seven Sacks
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Bryce Young's only live work of the window was the August twenty-sixth joint practice against Houston, where Zach Roberts at Panthers On SI charted him nine of seventeen with two interceptions and seven sacks taken. Sunday's cutdown then put both starting tackles on reserve lists for at least four games, leaving rookie Monroe Freeling and Rasheed Walker protecting his edges for Week One.
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Bryce Young got one live look this week, and it went badly. At the August 20-sixth joint practice against Houston, Zach Roberts at Panthers On SI charted him nine of 17 with two interceptions and seven sacks taken — and in the same session, rookie right tackle Monroe Freeling gave up multiple pressures to Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson. Roberts gives one piece of that back: one of the two interceptions, he writes, came off Jalen Coker's hands. That was the whole sample: Young and the starters sat Friday's finale by mutual agreement of Dave Canales and DeMeco Ryans, per Kassidy Hill at the team's site, and Carolina closed the preseason three and one with a 16 to 13 win. Kenny Pickett went five of eight for 48 yards; Kyle Trask went 19 of 28 for a hundred 47 yards with an interception and was released two days later, per the Associated Press, with undrafted rookie Haynes King making the roster as the third quarterback, per Darin Gantt at the team's site.
Then Sunday's cutdown made the protection problem official. Left tackle Ikem Ekwonu opens on reserve/PUP — the torn patellar tendon from January's playoff loss to the Rams — and right tackle Taylor Moton on the non-football illness list with a blood clot, each out at least the first four games, per Gantt. The Week One tackles on the published 53 are Freeling on the right and Rasheed Walker on the left. The line kept churning Monday: Carolina claimed offensive lineman Corey Bullock off waivers and waived guard Chandler Zavala in the corresponding move, per Josh Alper at Pro Football Talk.
Our last episode asked two things. Would the starters play the finale — no, so the one more check it wanted never came in a game. The closest the window got was the joint practice two days earlier, and Young lost that one. And would guards Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis stay healthy through cut week — they held, both listed as the starting guards on the published 53, per Gantt. The question just aged in the wrong direction: the guards held, the tackles didn't.
The thread, from the start: our June preview argued Young's floor rides on his protection, and the preseason has now run that experiment three times — three-and-outs behind backup guards, a touchdown drive behind the real ones, and now a charted nine-of-17 with seven sacks behind a line missing both starting tackles. Roberts reported the sacks and the Freeling pressures in the same notebook; we'll leave the causal line to the reader. What's changed is the size of the variable: in August it was a two-guard question, and it opens the season as a five-position one. The mechanism looks the same as ever — this week it just pointed down. We'll pick this up again when the real games arrive.
_Data via nflverse._
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