CHARLOTTE — Other people noticing that Bryce Young is getting better isn't going to change Bryce Young. He's been through this before.

But what the recognition does show is that people are noticing that he can and has become a difference maker. That, and him learning to make gnocchi explains a lot. More on that later.

The latest accolade came Tuesday, when the Panthers quarterback came in at No. 98 in the NFL Top 100. It's not exactly winning the Heisman Trophy or being chosen first overall in the draft, but it is an acknowledgment of the way the arrow is pointing here.

"I mean, I'm grateful for it, but I can't let that be a motivating factor for me," Young said when asked about the realization that his game has improved. "I think in sports, just in life, there's going to be ups, there's going to be downs. I can't control stuff like that, so I think for me, even if it is positive at the time, I can't flip-flop.

"I just focus on the work here. You know, that's all that matters."

In addition to that being a super Bryce Young answer, it's also a peek into what has become his super power — his ability to keep things the same, whether it's praise in the offseason or making a 17-0 deficit disappear, as he did when he brought the Panthers back against the Dolphins in Week 5, helping to turn a 1-3 start into a three-game win streak, and convince a lot of people they could win those games.

"Just an ultimate competitor and distributor, and he's ice cold in the big moment," offensive coordinator Brad Idzik said. "The competitor, for him, looks different. But every single person in that team meeting room knows, this guy, he's going to give you everything he's got. He's going to extend every play to the very last second. Go back to Miami last year, down 17, fourth down, and he's buying one extra tick with three guys barreling down on him just to be able to get that ball off to (Tetaroia McMillan) and keep us alive and eventually win the game. And then the clutch moments for him, where he doesn't bat an eye, that's just something he's always had. It goes back to Alabama, goes back to Mater Dei; he's a winner, and we've enjoyed watching all those fourth-quarter last-minute drives, giving us a chance in games.

"He doesn't blink. It doesn't matter what the situation is; you're getting the same guy, and that galvanizes the guys around him. What you want at the quarterback position is someone who elevates his team. They all see the look in his eye when it's fourth-and-long or when we've got to go down and score to win this game. That just heightens the bar for everybody, and everyone wants to rise to that level. So that's a special player."

Idzik tapped into the reason Young earned this kind of recognition. He's never been named All-Pro, or even to the Pro Bowl, so a Top 100 nod might sound strange to some. And because this list is picked by wide-open player ballots, not limited by positional quotas, it tends to skew toward fantasy football performers who make top-of-mind highlights. Last year, there were 16 quarterbacks on the Top 100 list (the 16th, at No. 91, was his fellow Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa). That's the background.

Young set new career highs last season in several categories, from passing yards (3,011) to touchdown passes (23) to passer rating (87.8). Of those, only the touchdowns (tied for 14th) ranked in the top half of the league.

But when you take it down to late-game situations, the times when games are won and lost, you see the separation.

Six of the eight wins last year came with him leading game-winning drives. That was tied for second-most in the NFL last season. He's had 12 of them since he entered the league in 2023, the most among all quarterbacks over that span. It's the second-most of any quarterback under the age of 25 since 2000. He also led the league in fourth-down passer rating (156.3)

That's the stuff other people noticed last season, but those closest to him saw it coming.

"Bryce Young is coming into himself. He is a true gamer, like just really good at the game of football," guard Robert Hunt said. "If we all were playing in the backyard of football, it's a lot of people, and you want to win, you probably should pick Bryce Young because he's just that good at the game of football.

"I mean, we just see the real him. We see who he really is from the leadership standpoint and a baller standpoint. The dude can flat-out play, we all see that, and I think the fans are starting to see that, too, when it comes to the games here. He's putting on plays. He's making plays, he's putting on shows. So, before long, everybody will see it."

It took a moment for that to emerge, and that time had to be endured from a rookie year that included just two wins and double the amount of player-caller changes, to being benched early in his second season under a new coach. Young has shown that he's a survivor, in the sweep of seasons as well as the fleeting seconds in games.

"The first two seasons were tough, but every year he just keeps getting better, keeps getting better," veteran wideout David Moore said. "You get some stuff happen in your career, you hit adversity. He had a major adversity: starting QB getting benched, coming back, fighting, fighting, coming back the next season, fighting, fighting, and then taking your team to the playoffs, and they haven't been in the playoffs in 10 years.

"And he's doing that all just calm, cool, and collected, and just never wavering. He's having fun now. He's starting to come out, and he's able to be himself because things are just falling in the right place. He's just one of those guys. It's like something's going to come out of this. So, eventually, you just see how he carries himself. You see the way he moves around, you see how he interacts with everybody. You're starting to see him doing a lot more coming out of that shell, and it's like he's doing it all just pure and genuine."

While the differences are subtle, teammates have picked up on Young's growing sense of comfort. It's not the social media buzz that comes with barking at teammates to get better in practice — they've all seen that before when the mics weren't hot. It's the way he's moving through an offseason that includes some adjustments. The player personnel changes have been slight, but he's adapting to the voice of Idzik in his earpiece rather than head coach Dave Canales (who called offensive plays for the first two seasons), and having some new wrinkles added to the offense to better suit his strengths.

Young said OTAs were a time for "pushing the envelope," finding out the things they're good at, and building on those. As he calls it "figuring out how we're going to start to build our own identity."

"We've experimented with some new stuff during OTAs," he said. "I think for us the ability to just get in and out of stuff, for me feeling comfortable having consistency in this offense, being able to operate the line of scrimmage is something that we've had reps in. Now that we've talked about trying to incorporate a little bit more this upcoming season, it's great that we have this group of smart guys who can comprehend things.

"Coaches try to throw everything in the kitchen sink at them now, to see how they handle it, see if they can respond, and the receivers, the tight ends, running backs, O-line have done a great job of being able to manage the new terms, new things. So I think it's how well we can handle that, how well we can turn over and execute it. I think that the more stuff we can carry into the week, that gives play cards more variety, me more variety with checks, and more options in and out of the run and pass game. So I think just how much we can expand that and build is going to be huge for us."

He's a learner when he's here. He leans into that part of his football persona.

But his own identity seems largely the same. That's partially because it's entrenched in his personality. If Bryce Young started freaking out and having big reactions to every little thing, that would be the news, not that he was named to a list of top players.

He is, to borrow the coaching cliche, who he is.

But just as he did at Alabama, when people wondered if a quarterback his size could survive (at least until he won a Heisman), he's proving that he can thrive.

Even then, the younger Young might have put stock in outside evaluations, but he didn't let them change his plan.

"It was the same process," he said with a shrug. "Regardless of how I've been looked at any point in my life, really. I think that was what allowed me to just continue to be consistent. I just keep it in the building, focus on what I can control and not get too high or too low, and my worth doesn't come from the opinions of others. And that's not just football, that's life, so I try to embody that in everything I do."

He knows that sounds boring, and sounds like a version of the same answer he's been giving for most of a decade now. But within that is the reality that he is pushing, trying to add to the list of things he can control, to expand the toolbox.

He's hard to shake, but he's actually easy to stir.

Young is asked the last time he was amazed by anything, and he laughed.

"I'm not going to lie, it sounds corny, but I'm amazed a lot," he said. "I try to find gratitude in a lot of things, so I can get amazed by the color of an insect. How the world works is amazing to me. Really, I find that very, very often.

"Even if it's somewhere around the Carolinas, whether it's the mountains near Asheville, the lakes out here. I think it's beautiful how the world works. It sounds corny, but genuinely, I think it's how everything formed, how God made everything. I do actually get amazed by that a lot, so you'd be surprised it happens, honestly, pretty frequently."

And he's constantly pushing himself, whether it's passing concepts he can try in OTAs against a Jaycee Horn, or when he leaves the stadium.

Young can be a careful eater (picky is pejorative; he tends to eat with intention), but he's willing to try. And this offseason, he's working on his cooking skills. Many people will try to lock in on the basics, but Young has a tendency to do certain things the hard way. So he's not just trying to make a good plate of pasta; he decided to learn to make gnocchi, a complicated technique for even seasoned cooks. You have to have the proportions of specific ingredients just right, and you have to be patient and precise. And it requires time to learn the techniques and then adding the right tools so you can get it just right. Yes, he bought a special grooved wooden paddle to create the space in each potato dumpling to collect sauce, which is the point, but also evidence of the lengths he'll go to master his craft.

"It's like, what can I learn to do?" Young said. "Obviously, when I'm in this building, I understand the importance of this job and what it means, and that's all that I care about, and that's all that matters to me.

"And then I have to be a human outside of this, so I like trying new things. I like learning about new things. I like watching videos about stuff that I can learn. I try to be a well-rounded human being when I'm not here. So, yeah, anything that I feel like I can grow from, I kind of gravitate towards."

He's been moving in this direction for some time. Others are beginning to notice the trajectory.