Andy Dalton has been ‘thrown in the fire’ before. Can he lead the Panthers out of it?

When you hear people praise Andy Dalton as a quarterback — and you specifically hear that he’s someone who’s “been there before” — this is what they mean:

It’s Week 5 of the 2020 season. Late in the third quarter. The Dallas Cowboys are leading the New York Giants 24-23 at home when starting quarterback Dak Prescott drops back for a pass and then steps up in the pocket. He sees daylight. He scrambles. Prescott then gets taken down after an 8-yard gain, but as he tries to stand up, he clutches his right ankle. He grimaces in pain.

Michael Gallup, a Cowboys wide receiver at the time, puts his hands on his helmet. Head coach Mike McCarthy trudges to tend to his quarterback. The FOX broadcast immediately pans to Dalton, who is having trainers tighten his shoulder pads as the then 32-year-old QB hustles to action.

“Just being thrown in a fire,” Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, who was a rookie at the time, recalled of the moment.

“I mean, he’s played a ton of football,” added Zack Martin, a guard on the offensive line. “It’s something you recognized right when his number was called, right?”

It wasn’t a picture-perfect start. Lamb and Martin and starting running back Ezekiel Elliott all remember. Dalton’s first play from scrimmage was a sack. His first throw was incomplete to Lamb. He fumbled an exchange with the team’s center. He led a scoring drive his first possession — but it was really shouldered by the Dallas run-game, which punctuated the drive with a 12-yard Elliott TD run.

The end, however, was great. Dalton led a game-winning drive that started on his own 12 with 52 seconds left and ended with a go-ahead Greg Zuerlein 34-yard field goal as time expired. It was the 25th game-winning drive in the fourth quarter or overtime of Dalton’s career.

“As much ball as he’s played being a starter in Cincinnati for however many years,” Elliott said in response to a question from The Charlotte Observer, “he stepped into that huddle, commanded our attention, and he made it easier for ourselves to keep things going.”

Elliott added: “It didn’t matter if he was getting hit, taking it in the face. He stayed level-headed. That’s a great quality in a quarterback.”

Andy Dalton ready for similar challenge with Carolina Panthers

Ask around the Carolina Panthers’ locker room, where players are also now are looking at Dalton to lead them, and you’ll hear eerily similar comments. Eerily similar phrases. On Wednesday, various Panthers said he’s “cool, calm and collected” and that he’s “been here before” when describing the now 36-year-old quarterback — a guy who was taken in the same draft of Panthers great Cam Newton.

That composure can only mean good things for the Panthers, a team that is trying to emerge from its own smoke.

The Panthers, after being outscored 73-13 after an 0-2 start, are tapping the backup veteran quarterback to make his first start of the 2024 season on Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders. In doing so he’s replacing Bryce Young, the team’s No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 draft who has struggled mightily through two games, throwing for 245 yards and three interceptions in 2024.

Teammates showed their support for Young on Wednesday. They also weren’t shy about their confidence in Dalton.

Why?

In so many words: He’s been there before.

“The way he carries himself in the huddle, the way he operates the huddle, he’s making sure everything’s straight,” running back Miles Sanders said of Dalton. “Even when he’s calling the plays, he’s making sure he’s aligning players and certain stuff. Everyone breaks the huddle confident, and that’s the perks of having a veteran quarterback in the huddle.”

What exactly has Dalton seen? He started Week 1 during his rookie year. He led the Cincinnati Bengals to four playoff appearances. He and receiver AJ Green are among the most prolific QB-WR duos to this day. He’s been named to three Pro Bowl rosters. He’s also been benched by the organization that drafted him, been called up to be the starter mid-game, played for four teams in four years and been asked to mentor a draft pick from the sideline — a guy (Young) who Dalton has steadfastly believed in since his arrival.

He’s even played with this iteration of the Panthers, in a Week 3 game last season, where he threw for 361 yards and two touchdowns in a losing effort to the Seattle Seahawks.

Head coach Dave Canales hinted that the offense might look a bit different with Dalton under center. A lot of that is because the offense has to. Young completed 18 passes for 84 yards in Week 2 — the most amount of completions for under 100 yards. It was a product of an offense that refused to throw downfield, whether that be on Young or the playcaller or the collective.

But Canales did offer an analysis of something an older quarterback might see that a younger one might not.

“When you have a lot of games under your belt,” Canales said, “I think about Russ (Russell Wilson), think about Geno (Smith), I think about Baker (Mayfield), and I think about Andy — the amount of games they’ve seen, the different ways that defenses try to attack you. You can just anticipate things.

“You can see stuff happen before they’re actually happening. And you know how to have solutions for those things. So looking forward to Andy being able to do that.”

There is more upside to Dalton (6-foot-2, 220 pounds) than the fact that he’s been around the game so long. He’s got a great arm, as practice reps show. He’s unafraid to take deep shots. Offensive tackle Taylor Moton said he has become a better professional just from watching Dalton from afar and that the QB is “a genuine person, someone who you know loves helping others and always wants to be there for his brothers.”

Whether that yields wins remains to be seen. But what’s easy to see is Dalton is surrounded by teammates who believe in him — for what he’s done in Carolina, as well as for what he’s done elsewhere.