Canales says Young is the guy in 2026, extension talk can wait

Dave Canales reiterated this week that Bryce Young is Carolina's quarterback for 2026, while making clear that any conversation about a long-term extension isn't happening right now. It's a reasonable place to land. Young threw for 3,275 yards and 24 touchdowns last season, and the Panthers went 8–9 — a modest step forward from the previous two years, even if it wasn't enough to make the playoffs.

The deferral on an extension isn't a slight. It's just the practical reality of a team that has spent most of this offseason in triage mode. Taylor Moton is out with a blood clot. Nic Scourton tore his ACL on the first day of camp. The receiver room is thin, the linebacker corps is undermanned, and the backup quarterback situation required an emergency signing in Kyle Trask just weeks before the season. Locking Young into a long-term deal before any of that gets sorted out would be an unusual order of operations.

What Canales's statement does is settle the short-term question. Young is healthy and active, McMillan is back, and the organization isn't going to muddy the waters with a quarterback controversy heading into September. That's the floor. Whether it becomes anything more depends on how much of the structural damage around him gets repaired before the games start counting.