CHARLOTTE — Football is a physical sport; they know that when they sign up. And it keeps moving, waiting for no one, no matter what happens.

So last Sunday, when Bryce Young walked to the locker room to get his ankle worked on after taking a sack and writhing in pain on the ground for a few minutes, the rest of the Panthers did what they normally do.

For center Cade Mays, that meant getting some snaps with backup quarterback Andy Dalton on the sideline, and just expecting that's how it was going to be.

"I was over there snapping to Andy, and then when we went out for that next drive, Bryce was there in the huddle calling the plays," Mays said with a nod of respect. "So that's when I figured out, OK, he's back. He's good."

That's kind of what the Panthers have come to expect from their quarterback. He might be small, but he's tough, and he's proven that time and again.

"He's a tough guy, no doubt," veteran right tackle Taylor Moton said with a nod.

So after waving off a cart that offered him a ride, and walking to the locker room for a heavy-duty tape job, Young came back to the field without missing a snap, and all he did was break a franchise record with 448 passing yards in an overtime win over the Falcons.

"He's a dawg," Xavier Legette said simply, because the receivers recognize it too. Rookie Tetairoa McMillan said he greeted Young in the huddle when he returned with a basic "You good?"

"He's like, 'Yeah,'" McMillan joked. "So I was like, 'Well, next time get your ass up.'"

That wasn't a given, at least not immediately.

But for the linemen who have been around him since his rookie season, the getting up is what they've come to expect from their quarterback.

"I feel like he's been tough, but he definitely showed his toughness this past weekend," Moton said. "I'm happy he's able to come back in and finish the game for us, because I love playing with him."

Even though they weren't sure he was coming back, there was no big stir when he did reappear in the huddle for the next possession.

"We went to business," Moton said. "He just has a laser focus about him. He's very in his zone, his flow state, whatever that is, and he just came in, we went right back to work, and led us to a victory. I was excited to see him come back for sure."

Like Moton, left tackle Ikem Ekwonu has seen this since Day 1, recognizing early in his rookie year that Young had the kind of street cred required to survive in the NFL.

That's one thing for offensive linemen, who live their lives in car crashes, usually 60 or 70 a game. So when they see a smaller human being taking a shot and popping right up, it does something for the team and their perception of him.

"I mean, for sure," Ekwonu said. "It definitely sent a message like, if he feels like he can be out there, he's going to be out there fighting for us, so it's definitely inspiring.

"It's nice to know that we're all in the fight together. You know he can be out there; he's not going to go down unless he has to. It's definitely good to see he's going to be in there fighting for us and with us."

Again, there's a core of linemen who have been here with him throughout, and they've seen this previously. So Young walking on the practice field Thursday won't be a surprise to them.

When veteran lineman Austin Corbett was asked if Young proved something about himself Sunday against the Falcons, he just laughed.

"Maybe for the rest of the people; we see it all the time, so it's no different," Corbett said. "Like we know who he is, we're with him all the time, we get to see it, we get to see how he reacts and how he handles his treatment and his workouts and everything.

"So this is just normal for us, right?"

Corbett recalled Young's rookie year and his first preseason pass. As he was unloading a pass to Adam Thielen, Jets defensive end Solomon Thomas was unloading on him. Young popped right back to his feet after the blind side shot, the rookie earning the respect of his peers if they didn't already have it.

"Everybody did the collective, oh no, but I was like, oh wait, he's fine," Corbett said, grinning at the memory. "He's QB one. He's fine.

"I think it just looks unnatural because it's the NFL; everybody is supposed to be big, bad, and scary. He's Bryce, but he throws for 400 and whatever yards, sets a record, that's just what he does."

Of course, it wasn't just the physical battering he took that season, though there was plenty of that. As the Panthers struggled with injuries on the offensive line even more ridiculous than this year's, he took 62 of the team's 65 sacks allowed in 2023 (Dalton was good enough to a absorb three of them in Seattle). And it's one thing to get hit by a truck and smile when you're the size of Cam Newton, but this is a 5-foot-10, 204-pound man we're talking about.

When Dave Canales took the job, he said he watched all the film of Young's rookie year and was immediately impressed by the way he kept getting up, even as the season went off the rails, and ended with some ridiculous results (he was sacked nine times in the final two games, including six in Jacksonville).

But there was also the emotional and mental strain that came with going 2-15, changing play-callers four times over the course of the year, seeing the first professional coach you ever knew fired the week after Thanksgiving, and finishing with an interim coach and going into his first offseason not knowing who was going to work with him.

"I mean, back to his rookie year, he's been through hard times and, has always been very resilient," Mays said. "I think it speaks to his character; he's definitely a tough guy."

"It just speaks to the perseverance," Ekwonu added. "No challenge is too big, he just attacks everything head on and just figures out a solution for it and figure out, figures out a way to get through it. So it definitely speaks to his toughness and his perseverance."

And then came his 2024 season, which started with two rough games and a benching, which required a different kind of toughness than just taking a hit and getting up.

Corbett saw that translate to the practice field when Young was running the scout team.

"For how young he is, for him to have always been the guy in his life, right?" Corbett said. "When you're a five-star quarterback in high school and you go to Alabama, you win the Heisman, you're the No. 1 overall pick, for you not just to come into a place where it's like you get sat down like that, it's hard. And for him to manage that and to go through that, he woke up.

"You could tell he was obviously frustrated, but every day was the same for him. And he went to that scout team, and was just dominating, just picking apart our defense, getting the card, and just cutting it free. It was that ability to take the scout team, you get to go have fun. You want to beat the defense down so it makes them lock in for Sundays. So I think that was his ability to just go play free for a couple of weeks and cut it loose and enjoy it.

"Because I mean, he got here and it was, hey, here's an entire organization, city, they're all on your shoulders now. That's a lot."

So after all that, and the wild swings of emotion from winning at Green Bay to losing at home to the Saints, the simple act of getting up from an ankle injury isn't anything they anticipate bothering Young.

"That's what he has to be like; this game is too hard and it's an emotional game for sure, but to let yourself get too high, too low, you can't," Corbett said. "You have to be able to find that steady grounding. For how quickly he's done it at 24 or however old he is, it's impressive."