Panthers should consider playing Bryce Young again to find out if he's a franchise QB

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — When coach Dave Canales benched 2023 No. 1 draft pick Bryce Young two weeks into the season, he said it was because veteran Andy Dalton gave the Carolina Panthers the best chance to win.

He may have been right — and he may still be right.

But now, with the Panthers (1-6) on a four-game skid with Dalton under center, injuries piling up and the defense among the NFL’s worst ever, they seem destined to wind up with a top five pick in the 2025 draft, if not No. 1 overall. That means, of course, they would have their choice of one of the top quarterbacks coming out of college next April.

So it would seem it's time to find out, for better or worse, where owner David Tepper, general manager Dan Morgan and Canales stand on Young — assuming they haven’t already made up their minds.

The Panthers need to play Young again.

But Canales doesn't think so.

He defended his decision Monday to continue to start Dalton this week at Denver.

“I completely sensitive to the questions and they are not unfounded and unbased," Canales said after being asked about why the team won't play Young. "From my perspective I'm trying to get a team to continue to take strides and take steps and that is where my focus has to be. It has to be on getting Andy to play his best football.”

Young's first tenure as a starter was a disaster. He went 2-14 as a rookie and then flopped in his first two starts this season, resulting in his sudden benching before a Week 3 game against the Raiders.

Dalton initially gave the Panthers a boost with a win at Las Vegas, but his production has steadily declined. On Sunday against the Commanders, the 36-year-old was limited to 93 yards passing with two first-quarter interceptions, including one that was returned for a touchdown on the offense's opening series. The result was a lopsided 40-7 loss.

Make no doubt, the Panthers have a lot invested in Young.

They traded away four picks and top wide receiver D.J. Moore to move up eight spots in the draft to select Young over C.J. Stroud.

But Tepper, a hedge fund billionaire, he has been quick to cut ties when he thinks he's made a bad investment. Look no further than Matt Rhule, Frank Reich, Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield.

There is no real downside to playing Young at this point.

If he happens to turn things around, the Panthers can continue to build around him and look toward the future. And, if still not convinced, Young at least will have raised his trade value.

On the flip side if Young continues struggle and lose games, the Panthers will be well positioned to draft a QB and once and for all move on from what thus far has been a colossal mistake and may go down as one of the worst trades in NFL history.

Canales said after benching Young the team had no plans to trade him.

When asked about it on Monday, he responded, “again hypotheticals. That is stuff that Dan (Morgan) and (executive vice president of football operations) Brandt Tilis will be talking through, all of those different processes. Right now my focus is to get us back to playing good football.”

We're going to need to skip this category because there isn't much working for the Panthers. The defense has surrendered a whopping 243 points through seven games, which is tied for the third most in the Super Bowl era. Only the 1973 Oilers and 1966 Falcons (250 each) have given up more. The Panthers ruled out eight players because of injuries before the game and three other key starters, DE Derrick Brown, LB Shaq Thompson and C Austin Corbett, have been lost for the season, while WR Adam Thielen is still on injured reserve. The offense hasn't been much better outside a running game that at times has shown flashes.

The Panthers' run defense entered the game ranked 30th in the league and then proceeded to allow the Commanders to rack up 214 yards on the ground. Injuries have cost the Panthers at linebacker, where four players were ruled out before the game.

Backup RB Miles Sanders had perhaps his best game with the Panthers, accounting for 95 yards on nine touches. He had six receptions for 61 yards. Sanders remains behind the hard-running Chuba Hubbard, who accounted for Carolina's touchdown on the ground. Carolina should be getting rookie RB Jonathan Brooks on the field in the next couple of weeks, adding to the team's depth at that position and potentially making Hubbard or Sanders expendable with the trade deadline coming up.

Canales. The first-year head coach is an overwhelmingly upbeat and positive person, but this season has to be starting to get to him. He's not getting the job done in Carolina as his team hasn't even been competitive in five of the seven games it has played this season.

Carolina appeared to come out of the game injury-free. However, the Panthers came into the game extremely banged up, with eight players ruled out before the weekend, including OLB Jadeveon Clowney, and ILBs Claudin Cherelus, Josey Jewell and Jon Rhattigan, which left the Panthers vulnerable to the run. WR Adam Thielen's status is uncertain heading into Week 8, but he would certainly give the offense a big boost if he's able to return.

154-62 — Margin by which the Panthers have been outscored in the first half this season.

The Panthers head to Denver (4-3) on Sunday looking to break a four-game slide. Carolina has lost 12 of its past 13 games on the road going back to last season.

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Carolina Panthers quarterback Andy Dalton speaks during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Washington Commanders, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in Landover, Md. The Commanders 40-7. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Washington Commanders linebacker Dante Fowler Jr. runs from Carolina Panthers running back Miles Sanders, right, as he returns an interception 67 yards for a touchdown during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in Landover, Md. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Carolina Panthers quarterback Andy Dalton throws a pass during the second half of an NFL football game against the Washington Commanders, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in Landover, Md. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Carolina Panthers quarterback Andy Dalton (14) talks Washington Commanders quarterback Marcus Mariota (18) after an NFL football game, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in Landover, Md. The Commanders 40-7. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young warms up before an NFL football game against the Washington Commanders, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in Landover, Md. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young (9) runs onto the field before an NFL football game against the Washington Commanders, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in Landover, Md. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young throws a pass during the second half of an NFL football game against the Washington Commanders, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in Landover, Md. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

SAYLORSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Fethullah Gülen, a reclusive U.S.-based Islamic cleric who inspired a global social movement while facing unproven accusations he masterminded a failed 2016 coup in his native Turkey, has died.

The Alliance for Shared Values, a New York-based group that promotes Gülen's work in the U.S., said that Gülen died Sunday night at a hospital near his home in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. Monroe County Coroner Thomas Yanac Jr. said he was informed that Gülen, who was in his eighties and had long been in ill health, died of natural causes.

The group called him a “towering figure of faith, wisdom, intellectual and spiritual leadership" whose “impact will be felt for generations.”

Gülen spent the last decades of his life in self-exile, living in a gated compound and wielding influence among his millions of followers. He espoused a philosophy that blended Sufism — a mystical form of Islam — with staunch advocacy of democracy, education, science and interfaith dialogue.

Gülen had not played an active role in his movement in recent years. A group of close friends who have advised him for decades will carry on the work, according to the Alliance for Shared Values.

The religious leader began as an ally of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan but became a foe. He called Erdogan an authoritarian bent on accumulating power and crushing dissent. Erdogan cast Gülen as a terrorist, accusing him of orchestrating the attempted military coup on July 15, 2016, when factions within the military used tanks, warplanes and helicopters to try to overthrow the government.

Heeding a call from the president, thousands took to the streets to oppose the takeover attempt. The coup plotters fired at crowds and bombed parliament and other government buildings. A total of 251 people were killed and around 2,200 others were wounded. Around 35 alleged coup plotters were killed.

Gülen adamantly denied involvement, and his supporters dismissed the charges as ridiculous and politically motivated. Turkey put Gülen on its most-wanted list and demanded his extradition, but the United States showed little inclination to send him back, saying it needed more evidence. He was never charged with a crime in the U.S., and he consistently denounced terrorism as well as the coup plotters.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Monday that Gülen’s death “will not make us complacent or relaxed. This organization has been a threat rarely seen in the history of our nation.” He called on Gülen’s followers to turn away from “this treasonous wrong path.”

In Turkey, Gülen’s movement — sometimes known as Hizmet, Turkish for “service” — has been subjected to a broad crackdown. The government arrested tens of thousands of people for their alleged link to the coup plot, sacked more than 130,000 suspected supporters from civil service jobs and more than 23,000 from the military, and closed hundreds of businesses, schools and media organizations tied to Gülen.

Gülen called the crackdown a witch hunt and denounced Turkey’s leaders as “tyrants.”

“The last year has taken a toll on me as hundreds of thousands of innocent Turkish citizens are being punished simply because the government decides they are somehow ‘connected’ to me or the Hizmet movement and treats that alleged connection as a crime,” he said on the first anniversary of the failed coup.

Ozgur Ozel, the leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party, said Gülen’s vast network remained a threat to Turkey.

“The founder is dead but the organization remains. No one should think that this danger has passed or is over. Everyone should be on guard against this organization," Ozel said.

On Monday, Turkey’s broadcasting regulator warned against content praising Gulen, saying no broadcaster can honor a “terrorist.” Meanwhile, prosecutors in the northwestern province of Bursa launched an investigation into a journalist on possible charges of engaging in terrorist propaganda, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, after she said she hoped he would rest in heaven.

Abdulhamit Bilici, who was editor of the Gulen-affiliated Zaman newspaper when Erdogan shut it down in early 2016, said Monday that Gulen was subjected to decades of persecution in Turkey, and that Turkey is the only nation that claims Gülen’s peaceful Hizmet movement is a terror group.

“He was a source of inspiration for millions of people, not just in Turkey, but around the world,” Bilici said in an interview at the Pennsylvania retreat center where Gulen lived. "So this is a very sad day and a day of reflection, mourning and thinking and prayer.”

Fethullah Gülen was born in Erzurum, in eastern Turkey. His official birth date was April 27, 1941, but that has long been in dispute. Y. Alp Aslandogan, who leads a New York-based group that promotes Gülen’s ideas and work, said Gülen was actually born sometime in 1938.

Trained as an imam, or prayer leader, Gülen gained notice in Turkey some 50 years ago. He preached tolerance and dialogue between faiths — meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1998 — and he believed religion and science could go hand in hand. His belief in merging Islam with Western values and Turkish nationalism struck a chord with Turks, earning him millions of followers.

Gülen’s acolytes built a loosely affiliated global network of charitable foundations, professional associations, businesses and schools in more than 100 countries, including 150 taxpayer-funded charter schools throughout the United States. In Turkey, supporters ran universities, hospitals, charities, a bank and a large media empire with newspapers and radio and TV stations.

But Gülen was viewed with suspicion by some in his homeland, a deeply polarized country split between those loyal to its fiercely secular traditions and supporters of the Islamic-based party associated with Erdogan that came to power in 2002.

Gülen had long refrained from openly supporting any political party, but his movement forged a de facto alliance with Erdogan against the country’s old guard of staunch, military-backed secularists, and Gülen’s media empire threw its weight behind Erdogan’s Islamic-oriented government.

Gülenists helped the governing party win multiple elections. But the Erdogan-Gülen alliance began to crumble after the movement criticized government policy and exposed alleged corruption among Erdogan’s inner circle. Erdogan, who denied the allegations, grew weary of the growing influence of Gülen’s movement.

The Turkish leader accused Gülen’s followers of infiltrating the country’s police and judiciary and setting up a parallel state and began agitating for Gülen’s extradition to Turkey even before the failed 2016 coup.

The cleric had lived in the United States since 1999 when he came to seek medical treatment.

In 2000, with Gülen still in the U.S., Turkish authorities charged him with leading an Islamist plot to overthrow the country’s secular form of government and establish a religious state.

Some of the accusations against him were based on a tape recording on which Gülen was alleged to have told supporters of an Islamic state to bide their time: “If they come out too early, the world will quash their heads.” Gülen said his comments were taken out of context.

The cleric was tried in absentia and acquitted but never returned to his homeland. He won a lengthy legal battle against the administration of then-President George W. Bush to obtain permanent residency in the U.S.

Rarely seen in public, Gülen lived quietly on the grounds of an Islamic retreat center. He left mostly only to see doctors for ailments that included heart disease and diabetes, spending much of his time in prayer and meditation and receiving visitors from around the world.

Gülen never married and did not have children.

Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

FILE - Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen meets members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pa. in July 2016. (AP Photo/Chris Post, File)

FILE - Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen meets members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pa. in July 2016. (AP Photo/Chris Post, File)

FILE - Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen meets members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pa. in July 2016. (AP Photo/Chris Post, File)

FILE - Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen speaks to members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pa. in July 2016. (AP Photo/Chris Post, File)