Carolina Panthers 2024 Futures Odds: Books Down on Bryce Young, Carolina

With five wins or fewer in four of the last five seasons, it should come as no suprise that the Panthers are expected to struggle once again in 2024.

Last year’s 2-15 finish marked the sixth straight sub-.500 season for this organization since David Tepper took over as owner in 2018.

In response, the Panthers made a number of changes this offseason. In January, they named former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Dave Canales as the replacement for Frank Reich, who did not make it a full season as head coach last year.

Carolina also made changes at GM (promoting Dan Morgan to replace Scott Fitterer) and up and down the roste. Last year’s squad finished dead-last in the NFL in opponent-adjusted DVOA, with the 31st-ranked offense and the 25th-ranked D (both according to DVOA).

The glass half-full take on this team is that if nothing else, it won’t just be more of the same personnel-wise.

Carolina Panthers 2024 Futures Odds

Oddsmakers do not buy Canales engineering an immediate turnaround. On paper, the NFC South will be by far the worst division in the NFL this year, again.

The last two NFC South champs, the eight-win Bucs in 2022 and the nine-win Bucs in 2023, showed that a .500 record is sometimes all it takes to contend in this division.

But the Panthers are nevertheless longer than 10-to-1 across the board to win the NFC South this year.

Carolina Panthers 2024 Betting Outlook

Carolina has new faces at head coach, GM and throughout the depth chart — both offensively and defensively — but it does have continuity at QB.

Bryce Young, the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, is coming off a brutal rookie season. Whether he can get on the right track this year will likely determine whether the Panthers return to respectability.

If Young doesn’t show that he’s the long-term answer under center, Carolina could end up back in the market for a franchise QB next spring for the fifth time since the 2020 offseason.

Will Dave Canales turn around one of NFL’s worst offenses?

• PFF OL Unit Ranking: No. 20
• PFF Receiving Unit (WRs/TEs) Ranking: No. 29
• PFF RB Unit Ranking: No. 27

Former Steelers WR Diontae Johnson and first-round pick Xavier Legette will be Young’s top two targets in 2024. A year ago, 33-year-old Adam Thielen was by far this team’s most productive receiver. Young and every Carolina WR (besides Thielen) failed to produce in 2023, as the Panthers finished dead-last in passing yards.

With a receiving core that underwhelmed (to put it nicely) and an offensive line that offered among the worst pass protection in the league (Young was sacked 62 times in 589 dropbacks, for a sack rate of over 10%), Young finished 2023 with abysmal numbers: 315-for-527 passing (5.5 yards per attempt), 11 touchdowns, 10 interceptions.

One last 2023 Panthers stat, perhaps the most damning of them all, before turning our attention to whether Canales can right the ship this year:

Young’s 62 sacks in 2023 added up to 477 yards lost. In 2023, only two receivers on this roster had more yards receiving than that: Thielen, with over 1,000, and D.J. Chark (barely).

The latter turned his 66 targets into 35 catches for 525 yards receiving.

The silver lining — if there is one in Carolina — is that there’s nowhere to go but up for this offense.

Will Carolina’s offensive investments make a difference?

Carolina spent big on Young’s supporting cast this offseason.

In addition to the acquisitions of WRs Johnson and Legette, Carolina gave veteran guards Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis big contracts to shore up the offensive line.

In the draft, Carolina didn’t stop upgrading the offense after taking Legette with the No. 32 overall pick, adding RB Jonathan Brooks in the second round and TE Ja’Tavion Sanders in the fourth.

But if there’s optimism about what this team can do offensively this season, it has more to do with what Canales pulled off the last two years than anything else.

Canales, an offensive assistant in Seattle from 2010-22, was hired as Tampa Bay’s OC last year in large part because of his role in Seahawks QB Geno Smith’s resurgence during the 2022 season.

A year after helping resurrect Smith’s career, Canales and his staff in Tampa Bay helped Baker Mayfield drastically exceed expectations in 2023. Mayfield arrived in Tampa with no guarantees he would even win the team’s starting job over Kyle Trask, but went on to enjoy a career-best season.

Now, Canales is tasked with getting the most out of a unique QB in Young. His athleticism and accuracy are tantalizing — there’s a reason Carolina was widely praised when it took Young ahead of C.J. Stroud at No. 1 overall last April — but he must prove in Year 2 that he can be effective in the pocket despite his small frame.

If Lewis, center Austin Corbett and Hunt can give Young time and space to work, he’ll have a chance to take a massive step forward. That being said, the skepticism of Young and this offense will remain warranted until Canales and Young prove otherwise.

Could Panthers defense be greater than the sum of its parts?

• PFF DL Unit Ranking: No. 29
• PFF Linebacker Ranking: No. 18
• PFF Secondary Unit Ranking: No. 25

Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero is a respected coach with a bright future despite both his seasons of DC experience coming with losing teams (the Broncos in 2022 and the Panthers in 2023).

He interviewed for head-coaching roles with multiple organizations in each of the last two offseasons. It was notable that Canales elected to keep him as DC in Carolina, because new head coaches rarley retain the defensive coordinator from the previous staff.

Between Evero, underrated DT Derrick Brown and veteran free agent Jadeveon Clowney, Carolina has an intriguing defense despite a lack of stars following Brian Burns’ offseason departure via trade. The problem for the Panthers is that outside of Brown, even the highest-upside players on this unit are question marks:

• third-year CB Jaycee Horn has flashed at times, but he’s started only 22 games in three years since the Panthers took him at No. 8 overall in 2021
• Clowney, a 31-year-old, three-time Pro Bowler, is coming off a 9.5-sack season in Baltimore, but his inconsistency year-to-year is a big reason he’s changed teams almost every offseason since 2018
• LB Shaq Thompson, 30, is a solid veteran if healthy, but he’s coming off a broken fibula that limited him to two games in 2023
• LB D.J. Wonnum joined Carolina in free agency last spring after an eight-sack season as a Viking in 2023, but could miss the start of the season as he continues to recover from a torn quad

Carolina could be better than expected on defense if all the players mentioned above can stay healthy enough to make an impact. Still, all those question marks combine to give this unit a low floor, even if the ceiling might be higher than most fans realize.

Carolina Panthers 2024 Best Bets

Panthers win total: over 5.5 (-115) DraftKings

When a team’s futures odds are as long as Carolina’s are entering 2024, a rough season is (obviously) the most likely outcome. The question with teams like this becomes, could they surprise some people?

Given what Young showed at Alabama and all the resources that Carolina devoted to its offense this spring — not to mention what Canales got out of Smith in Seattle in 2022 and Mayfield in Tampa Bay in 2023 — it’s not impossible to see the Panthers getting to six or seven wins, expecially in the NFC South.

After all, as recently as last season, a few flawed teams with issues at QB (including the 6-11 Titans, the 6-11 Giants and the 7-10 Vikings) got to at least six wins, and that is all it would take for a bet on Carolina to go over its win total to cash.

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