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Blazing Andy Dalton sets new standard for QB play in 2024 NFL season

Matt Alquiza

Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images
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Not Patrick Mahomes. Not Joe Burrow. Not Josh Allen. Not even Bryce Young. But 36-year old, hasn’t started a game in a year, fresh off the pine, Andy Dalton, just set the standard for quarterback play in 2024. 

The Carolina Panthers new starting signal caller just quarterbacked the league’s first 300 yard, three touchdown performance of the 2024 NFL season. His play on the field (Dalton finished 26/37 for 316 yards, three touchdowns, and no turnovers) was as impressive as the statistics bear it out to be. 

Dalton’s performance was something straight out of a Disney movie. From his first dropback of the game Dalton was über-confident pushing the ball downfield. The veteran quarterback maneuvered clean pockets and delivered dime after dime to his receivers that were running wide open all over the Vegas strip. It ceases to feel real when a quarterback like Dalton, who has been an important name in the lexicon of football fans since he quarterbacked Texas Christian University to an undefeated record and a Rose Bowl victory in 2010, comes off the bench and injects life into the NFL's most listless offense.

The most impressive throw of his dazzling afternoon was a 31-yard seed to fellow 30-something Adam Thielen that put Carolina up 21-7 as the first half came to a close. Much has been made this week about the NFL’s two-high safety craze, but the Raiders defense plays more single-high safety looks than the average modern NFL defense, bucking the trend. That schematic choice allowed Dalton to attack the seam on this bonkers touchdown toss that put an exclamation point on his frankly unbelievable first half of football.

It’s hard to remember a Panthers quarterbacking performance like this. The franchise has been meandering through the proverbial quarterback wilderness since Cam Newton’s shoulder broke down, and an elite aerial attack has been a rare sight in Carolina in recent years. A vivacious "Keep Pounding" chant broke out in Allegiant Stadium as the clocked ticked down in the fourth quarter, another happening from this evening that felt like a relic of the bygone Cam Newton era.

Andy Dalton supplanted Bryce Young as the team’s starter in what has been described as a “short-term move” by some NFL insiders, but after what Dalton did this afternoon, there is no way the team can hand the reins back to Young. Dalton was efficient. He took the easy throws the Raiders allowed him while also pushing the ball downfield. He protected the football. Andy Dalton did everything you want a quarterback to do in the modern NFL and then some in the Panthers first road victory since January of 2023.

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Matt Alquiza
MATT ALQUIZA

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