Tommy Tremble makes two predictions about Panthers QB Bryce Young in 2026
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Tight end Tommy Tremble has seen a lot of stuff — particularly inside the Carolina locker room.
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Tremble is starting his sixth season in the league, all with Carolina since the team drafted him in the third round in 2021 during the utterly forgettable Matt Rhule era.
In those first five years with the Panthers, Tremble had five head coaches (including the interims). “Some of it has been tough,” he said. “We’ve had some hiccups.”
Tremble has never had a winning season with the Panthers (although he played on his first Panther playoff team a year ago). He’s gone from a 20-year-old draftee, fresh out of Notre Dame, to a 26-year-old veteran with a wife and a 13-month-old son.
So he’s got some experience. And when he looked around the field last week as teammates walked off after a practice, he liked what he saw.
“This will be the best team I’ve been a part of here,” Tremble said.
In particular, Tremble is bullish on the team’s stability. For the first time, he’s going to have the same head coach for the third year in a row in Dave Canales. He will have the same starting quarterback for the fourth straight year. And a large part of his optimism has to do with QB Bryce Young.
“Bryce is playing on a different level,” Tremble said during our wide-ranging conversation last week. “I’m excited to see him. He’s gonna ball out. And it’s gonna get him paid.”
One of those things probably would beget the other for Young, entering his fourth NFL season.
The Panthers picked up the fifth-year option on Young in April, meaning he’s signed through the 2027 season. But the next step after that would be a contract extension to keep him in Charlotte several years longer, one that likely would be signed long before the current deal expires at the end of the 2027 season.
Based on current NFL standards, and if Young continues to progress at roughly the same rate he did last year, an eventual four-year, $200-million contract would be in the ballpark.
That, of course, assumes Young plays well and the Panthers keep winning games. It could always go the other way — everyone who’s watched the NFL knows how fragile these things can be.
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Tremble, meanwhile, is entering his own contract year and knows that 2026 will be a significant year in his own career.
“I’m just trying to be the best at my job that I can,” he said. “That’s how you stay in the league — keep doing stuff that no one else can do.”
The Panthers once again will have a “tight end by committee” approach this year, meaning that once again no one is going to touch the sort of receiving seasons that Greg Olsen or Wesley Walls had for Carolina back in the day.
But that’s OK with Tremble, whose blocking prowess was largely what got him drafted in the first place. The son of former NFL player Greg Tremble, who briefly played defensive back for Dallas in the 1990s, Tommy Tremble said back when he was drafted that he wanted to be a “violent and versatile” player for the Panthers.
He’s done that. The first time Tremble ever touched the ball in the NFL was on a rare tight end reverse, and he scored on it. But he’s never had a year with more than 249 receiving yards (his career high, which came last year). And he puts as much stock in a good block as he does in a third-down conversion on a reception.
“Everyone likes getting the rock,” Tremble said. “But I love a well-executed play that changes the game, no matter what it is. Making the right block on fourth-and-1 for a running back to run behind you? I think that’s the best feeling in the world.”
Canales said last week of Tremble: “Tommy’s had a great spring. He’s worked through some things physically over the last two seasons and had as healthy of a spring as I’ve seen him (have). He looks fast…. I really expect to see great things from him.”
For his part, Tremble said he believes this team will be “better in every aspect” from the one in 2025 that won the NFC South (albeit with an 8-9 record) and gave the L.A. Rams all they could handle in a first-round playoff game before losing in the final seconds.
“We’ve tasted success,” Tremble said. “We won a divisional championship. We just need to learn how to finish. And that’s what this year is all about — finishing the season right.”
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