Bryce Young ‘good, not great,’ backup QB nurses injury as Panthers return to Clemson

The Carolina Panthers returned to Clemson on Thursday night for the first time since 1995, when they played an entire season in Death Valley because Bank of America Stadium hadn’t yet been finished.

The players on that inaugural Panthers team are now in their 50s and 60s. Bank of America Stadium is old enough that it will soon undergo $650 million in renovations, which is more than twice what it originally cost.

And the Panthers in Clemson is still a bit of a tough sell, much like it was in 1995.

Before we get to that, though, here’s a quick report from the Panthers’ intrasquad scrimmage. Backup quarterback Andy Dalton didn’t play at all in the scrimmage because he now has a recently sustained quad injury that will keep him out a “couple of weeks,” head coach Dave Canales said.

That meant fans saw a lot of third-string quarterback Jack Plummer and will again in next week’s preseason opener Thursday at New England. It also means that the Panthers are going to sign another QB for the short term, Canales said — a lower-profile player who can be a “third arm” and can help Plummer and starter Bryce Young make the practice throws.

As for Young, Canales gave his performance a decent review.

“I would say good, not great,” Canales said. “He’s definitely going to be critical on himself on a couple of the plays, But I thought that when we had the protections and the concepts there, he nailed it.”

For the first-team defense, edge rusher Jadeveon Clowney was a standout, “sacking” Young once (no QBs were actually tackled) and disrupting several more plays. Clowney, laughing afterward, said he may have gotten extra energy from playing at Clemson since he had so much success winning in Death Valley as a South Carolina Gamecock.

As for the crowd that watched all this?

It was modest.

Tickets were just $5 for Thursday’s event, with the money going to charity. The Panthers pulled out all the stops after they made the 140-mile bus ride to Clemson. They had an intrasquad scrimmage, a fan giveaway for two Super Bowl tickets, some Panther legends available for autographs and a big post-practice fireworks show. Canales also addressed the crowd as the practice began, giving them a bit of a pep talk.

“We’re looking for great effort and great enthusiasm,” Canales told the fans, speaking of his players.

The same words could be applied to the Panthers’ fanbase, too. Thursday was another stark example that this team has lost so many games over the past six years that it has also lost the “great enthusiasm” that once surrounded the team.

The crowd Thursday night could have fit into a basketball arena. It wasn’t the worst crowd I’ve ever seen — by 45 minutes into the event, there were maybe 10,000-12,000 people inside. But in Clemson’s mammoth 81,000-seat Memorial Stadium, the place still looked mostly empty and the upper deck certainly was (ESPN reported that the Panthers sold about 17,500 tickets).

This, of course, happens at Bank of America Stadium too, but less so because opposing fans often buy up half the available tickets. It won’t change until the Panthers start winning again. Their last playoff season was 2017.

But Clemson was always a difficult place for the Panthers to fill, even when it’s not a glorified practice on a weeknight where it rained hard a couple of hours before the practice began and it also happened to be the first day of school in the local South Carolina school district.

Still, I was around in 1995, and the team originally thought it would sell out all eight of its regular-season games in Clemson and made no bones about saying so.

Instead, only one of the eight sold out — against the San Francisco 49ers. A traffic nightmare on Interstate 85 for the very first preseason game definitely hurt, as a lot of fans immediately soured on the experience when what should have been a 2.5-hour drive turned into a five-hour one.

But it was also true, back then and now, that Clemson is a haul from almost anywhere. It’s a great stadium once you get to it, but it’s never been easy to get to. The Panthers also have barely any history with Clemson players — amazingly, they’ve never drafted a single Tiger.

The Panthers of 1995 weren’t bad, either. They went 5-3 in regular-season games at Clemson. Clemson is where Sam Mills intercepted a shovel pass to key the Panthers’ first-ever win. That was a team that finished 7-9 and made the NFC Championship game the following year.

Those Carolina games in Clemson usually drew around 50,000-55,000 fans, which was very respectable but not the sellouts for which the Panthers had been hoping. Games sometimes were blacked out on television. It was weird.

The players could literally sometimes get back home from a West Coast game on a plane in about the same amount of time that they could get home on the bus at night after a Clemson game. Then-coach Dom Capers — who’s still a special assistant with the Panthers — and his players in 1995 used to sometimes say that the only difference between coming home from a game in San Francisco and a game in Clemson was a hot meal and a couple of flight attendants.

Now it’s a little bit weird again around Panther-ville. (It was also a little weird seeing Panthers owner David Tepper and Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney shake hands Thursday night on the sideline, but also kind of cool.)

Watching the Panthers practice Thursday night reinforced to me that they aren’t going to go 2-15 again. There’s more talent out there than there was a season ago, particularly on offense (where there could have hardly been less in 2023).

But looking around the stadium — with maybe one of every eight seats filled — reinforced to me that this team has a long way to go to recapture the imagination of Carolina sports fans.

People who go to Death Valley, after all, are used to watching a Clemson team that wins nine games in a mediocre season.

When the Panthers win nine games in a season again, they’ll throw a parade. Until then, a lot of people are going to find better things to do.

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