CHARLOTTE — Anyone looking for a reflective Bryce Young on Wednesday would have left disappointed.

But that's also part of what makes him well-suited for the situation he's in.

The resilience he showed last year, bouncing back from being benched two games into the season to playing well after regaining the starting job, is a large part of why they have confidence in him. And that's real.

Just don't expect him to expound on it.

"Yeah, honestly, I'm not a big look in the rearview kind of guy," Young said when asked the inevitable questions about last season. "I'm excited for this year. I'm excited for this group this year, and I feel great. We all feel great as a team, and we're excited to compete. You know it's a long offseason. You miss the game, you miss the sport, and camp was really good.

"It was a competitive preseason, you kind of get to ramp off and get that taste of game playing in the season, and now that it's here, we're all super grateful for that."

It's not that Young doesn't understand his situation entering this season is unique, it's just that he's not dwelling on it.

As he's said many times since Young was benched in Week 3 last season, Canales pointed to the way Young responded as the reason he's confident he can do the job.

"I wasn't surprised," Canales said. "He revealed a lot of his character in that process and showed great leadership. He stayed in front of the team. He did not take a seat in the back and just kind of let this thing play out. He continued to lead.

"And he was sending a message very clearly to me, that this is my team and I respect it. And that's exactly right, this is a place where we want to create an organization and a football philosophy where this team belongs to the players. We're all doing this together, but it becomes the most powerful when those guys own it in the locker room."

That comes through in a lot of little ways, and his teammates see it. During that short moment between being released last Tuesday and being back on the roster on Saturday, wide receiver Hunter Renfrow said Young called him, and talked about the experiences they've shared — even though they don't have all that much in common on the surface.

"I appreciate that Bryce gave me a call on Wednesday or Thursday and kind of told me about his year last year and some things that happened, so he has a lot of perseverance stories to share," Renfrow said. "And you know, just to have a leader like that in the locker room and some of these other guys have been awesome."

And when you get right down to it, the challenge of leading the 2025 Panthers doesn't have much to do with the 2024 Panthers. The experience can be shaped by it, but it's not determinative.

So for Young, the challenges are the ones in front of him, rather than the ones in that rearview mirror he doesn't really use.

For instance, he's adjusting his starting group of receivers in the last week, after the trade of Adam Thielen back to Minnesota, and the return of Renfrow to sandwich between Tetairoa McMillan and Xavier Legette.

But even in answering that question — which has a practical application to this week — Young didn't want to get bogged down in an issue that's all of seven days old.

"Like I said before, it's not a ton of looking in the past and comparing and figuring out right now," Young said. "We know that the group that we do have, and everyone brings their own things. And for us, it's making sure that we get people in the right spots, people play like themselves. They've been putting the work in they've been doing everything great.

"And I'm excited to watch the guys that we have in the perimeter go be the guys. Not everyone gets to see the work that they put in. So I'm excited for them to get to just play, and I have all the confidence in the world in them."

That was Young talking about other people, but in a lot of ways, it's a microcosm of where he is in this moment as well.

Everything is about the right now.

So for Canales and the rest of them, Young keeping that focus narrow is the reason he was able to bounce back last year, and the reason they trust him now.

"I think the cool part about last year was, there's this cool thing, for both of us really, as his first-time coach and play-caller," Canales said. "And then for Bryce coming back in and playing the type of ball, and I don't know if he shares this point of view, but I'm just sharing my point of view. I wanted to prove to him that I can put a really good offense together that you'll be excited about, and that you'll be able to help us grow and evolve over the course of time.

"And then I just look at the way he approached it and the way he continues to approach it is to show us, to show his teammates first and foremost, and our Panthers fans, that he's the guy for this team. So there's just a real cool mutual respect that I think both of us have kind of grown just over the course of time and just working together daily."

But make no mistake, the course of time part isn't anything Young's interested in talking about. Just the daily.