CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Carolina Panthers quarterbacks have made a lot of headlines in recent days, and none of them involved Bryce Young.

Kenny Pickett started the first preseason game and led a touchdown drive on his third series. Haynes King took over for Pickett, took over the game and then went from Hall of Fame Game hero to the injured list.

Former Florida and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Kyle Trask was signed in the wake of King’s hamstring injury and showed up Sunday wearing Andy Dalton’s old No. 14 jersey.

Meanwhile, Young was relegated to a new space — in the background. The 2021 Heisman Trophy winner and the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NFL Draft led the Panthers’ offense through a half-speed, pregame practice in Canton, Ohio, then walked off Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium wearing a big smile after King’s game-winning touchdown.

Young and his teammates were back on the practice fields Sunday morning, when Young resumed what has been an exceptional training camp. He has fired darts to Tetairoa McMillan in the back of the end zone, feathered a touch pass to a well-covered Ja’Tavion Sanders along the sideline and slipped out of the pocket and found receivers on off-platform plays.

It’s too bad fans haven’t been able to see it.

Now in his third year in the Dave Canales/Brad Idzik offense, Young has the look of a composed quarterback who knows where the ball is supposed to go and knows he’s going to get it there.

“Just being here for the last year and a half, I’d say he just seems more comfortable,” said Mitchell Evans, the second-year tight end. “Even from when I first got here to now, he seems more confident in himself. And just the way he carries himself, he’s got more of a presence. And you can see that reflected on the field and even in the locker room and throughout the building. You can see he’s more confident.”

Young has come a long way since his five-game benching in 2024 during Canales’ first season in Charlotte. He’s improved each of the past two seasons, though he’s still a ways away from being considered among the league’s top quarterbacks.

In The Athletic’s Mike Sando’s annual quarterback rankings — based on polling of 50 executives and coaches — Young landed in the third of four tiers and ranked 22nd among 35 QBs. That was a slight improvement from 2025 when Young ranked 24th.

Like Evans, at least one coach polled by Sando saw a more confident quarterback.

“His command, his confidence, his accuracy, the movement — he just seemed so much more confident as a player,” said the coach, whose team played the Panthers in the second half of the 2025 season. “It was an eye-opener for all of us to watch him perform. It reflected in their team.”

The Panthers view Young as an ascending player but aren’t ready to pay him quite yet. The team plans to let Young play out this season before deciding on a second contract.

Inconsistency has helped hold Young back. But with a solid cast of playmakers around him, led by McMillan, the 2025 Offensive Rookie of the Year, maybe this is the year Young makes a big leap in his development.

“I try to feed off the people around me. All of us are pushing each other, wanting to be at our best,” Young said Sunday. “Coaching staff challenging me, challenging all of us to take that next step system-wise. It’s just about having that growth mindset.

“For me, I just try to be where my feet are, make sure I’m focused. Whatever happens in the future, happens in the future. When you start thinking about that, you’re not able to focus on where you’re at.”

Where Young will be this weekend is Buffalo, where he’ll help break in the Bills’ new $2.1 billion stadium. Young will be more of an active participant than he was in Canton: Canales said he plans to play Young and the other starters between 10 and 20 reps, depending on how the offensive possessions play out.

If Young’s rep count turns out to be on the high side, he could eclipse his playing time for all of last preseason. Young played two series in the first two exhibitions (totaling 20 snaps) before sitting out the final tune-up against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“I’m excited just to be able to go out there with the guys. Any time you get to play football live in a stadium, it’s a privilege,” he said. “Especially being able to go out there last week, you’re around it. Obviously I wasn’t playing, but you get that itch again.”

The Panthers will practice three more times before flying to Buffalo, giving Young three more chances to best the defense in the competitions that Canales stages during team periods. Young has been on the winning side in a lot of them, not that he’s spent much time rehashing them.

Nor was Young interested in discussing his strong camp and what it might mean for the season to come.

“I’m not a big sit back, reflect, compare (person). Doesn’t really do anything for me. So I don’t think about the past like that,” he said. “I’m happy with the camp we’re having so far. I’m happy with the growth as a unit. But it’s still early. We’ve got a lot more to do.”

PAWTUCKET, R.I. — By the time Portland Thorns forward Pietra Tordin reached the media workroom of Centreville Bank Stadium, she had already heard most of the records she set on Sunday in a 4-3 win over the Boston Legacy.

First career hat trick, and the youngest Thorn to record one. Fastest goal she has ever scored. League leader in goal contributions. But as she sat down, flanked by defender Sam Hiatt, she was not fixated on the accomplishments.

The 22-year-old said she had no thoughts during the 90-minute game, which is why she laughed when remembering her concise halftime interview with CBS. She was just a vessel for soccer, a pure flow state. During her postgame media responsibilities, her words returned — mostly.

“Sometimes it feels like it’s not even me,” she said of her growing list of accolades. “I’m listening to all of this, and I’m like, ‘Wow, like cool! Cool, man.’”

To say Tordin can, at times, have the laidback vibes of Crush, the surfer-dude turtle from “Finding Nemo”, would not be far off base. Her growing in-game interviews are proof of that. During a previous halftime interview, when asked how the Thorns could see out a game, she answered “Score more goals?” in the innocently sly way of a player who can dance around an obvious question as well as she can with a ball at her feet.

There’s more to Tordin than playful charm, though.

Following a collegiate career at Princeton, Tordin signed with the Thorns for the 2025 season. Last year, she scored five goals and picked up a couple of Rookie of the Month nods, though she missed out on being a finalist for the year-end award. Tordin has yet to earn a U.S. senior national team call-up, but was selected for the Futures Camp and was the youth team’s leading scorer at the 2024 U-20 World Cup.

Born in the U.S. to Brazilian parents, Tordin is a dual citizen who trained with Brazil’s youth national team before swapping to the U.S. It did not take the Thorns long to lock her into a new contract through 2029, a necessary piece of business alongside ongoing negotiations with key free agents like Sophia Wilson.

“One of the things about this league is that players come in, they have to learn very quickly,” Thorns assistant coach Sarah Lowdown said on Sunday, stepping in for head coach Robert Vilahamn, who was sent off in the second half against Boston. “Pietra, she’s already a true professional, and she’s always trying to ‘meg everybody at training. She has a really funny personality, and she also knows when to be serious and get to work.”

Tordin started her scoring on Sunday with an early free kick from just outside the corner of the box, tipping it off and over Legacy goalkeeper Casey Murphy’s gloves. Her second was a more standard goal from the middle of the box off a Jessie Fleming assist. Her third, though, was a perfect touch: a long ball from Thorns goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold, a couple of bounces, and Tordin’s right foot slicing expertly underneath to chip it over Murphy while running at full pace.

Portland Thorns FC forward Pietra Tordin scored her first career hat trick against the Boston Legacy. (Edward Finan / Imagn Images)

“What people will remember is the hat trick, which is fantastic,” Hiatt said, stepping in on a question for Tordin to keep things a little more serious.

“But she put in such a shift for us defensively, and that was absolutely what we needed, especially in the second half towards the end. I just want to recognize that as well, because again, the hat trick was crucial and we love it, but she was really covering ground and doing so much for us defensively. She (did) a little bit of everything today.”

Tordin has been doing that a lot for the fifth-place Thorns this season, but Sunday’s road win could not have come at a more crucial time for Portland as they looked to bounce back from a 5-1 drubbing at the hands of the Utah Royals.

The victory over Boston was more narrow than the first 15 minutes of the game suggested, but for the Thorns, the win was necessary. It broke a pattern of: score early, head home with zero points. Tordin’s hat trick, plus a goal from Wilson, was enough to keep the Legacy at bay — though it won’t entirely put to rest questions about the team’s ability to close out games.

“A lot was said after our result last week,” Tordin said postgame, “but coming into this game, at least for me and the group, passion, aggression and intent was a big key to moving forward in the season. This game, we definitely did show that we came in with a lot of hunger, obviously. I really think if we keep that same mentality going forward, that it can and it will only lead to good things.”

A CHIP. A HAT TRICK. A GOALKEEPER ASSIST. THIS GOAL HAS EVERYTHING.

Pietra Tordin completes the first-half hat trick ‼️

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— NWSL (@nwslsoccer.com) August 9, 2026 at 4:49 PM

The smaller moments that Hiatt referenced won’t make the match highlight reels, but they were on Tordin’s mind postgame as a reflection of the previous week’s work.

“Another emphasis that we had was just to put our heads down and work,” she said. “Doing the extra sprint, the proactive movement to get there defensively. I think we did all of that today.”

Hiatt is right, though. People will remember the hat trick. And a performance like that might finally nudge Tordin over the line for more end-of-season recognition and into serious contention for the senior national team, even at this point in the cycle with 2027 World Cup qualification on the horizon in November.

If nothing else, on a chaotic NWSL weekend full of award leaders scoring goals, Tordin provided one of the most entertaining performances. After all, as Lowdown said with a smile, “We know Pietra is a footballer.”

Teenage sprinter Tate Taylor has completed a historic medal sweep at the World Under-20 Championships hosted at Hayward Field, Oregon.

The 18-year-old American won 100m gold in a 9.94s personal best on Thursday, victorious by a tenth of a second over Gary Card (silver, 10.05s). He’s the first U.S. man to win that title since Noah Lyles, who did so in 2016.

“Once I got out at the top end, I knew it was going to be a good race,” he told World Athletics media. “There were some tweaks I was looking to fix after the semi-finals, and I think I executed those pretty well.”

Taylor followed that up with a storming 19.83s run for the 200m crown two days later, surpassing Lyles and all American men before him in an unprecedented double youth sprint gold. In still conditions, he won by nearly half a second ahead of compatriot Blake Hamilton (silver, 20.31s), bettering the championship record that Letsile Tebogo and Blessing Afrifah had jointly held from 2022 (19.96s).

Then he closed out the championships by anchoring the U.S. men to 4x100m gold, running an 8.75s anchor split — the quickest in the field — to complete an under-20 world-record run by the quartet, who clocked 38.16s. In second were Great Britain, who set an age-group European record with 38.90s.

Taylor is the first athlete in 40 years of the Under-20 World Championships to win the sprint treble. “It means a lot winning this gold medal,” he said. “We have been talking about this relay the whole week. We knew something special was about to happen. McDonalds’s, I am coming for you.”

Team USA enjoyed a record-breaking championships on home soil, winning 24 medals in total and 12 golds — bettering the Soviet Union’s 22 medals from 1988. Texas-born Mia Maxwell also claimed two individual sprint crowns (100m and 200m).

“This double gold that Tate Taylor and Mia Maxwell just pulled off is probably one of the hardest to do,” wrote Lyles, the 100m Olympic and 200m world champion, on X. “Mostly because of how hard the schedule is. Six races in four days is so hard on the body. Then to do it as U20 athletes is even crazier.”

Last week saw the end of a 23-race season for Taylor. He heads to Texas Tech to compete in the NCAAs from this September. Taylor also won 100m and 200m national age-group titles this year, and his standout win came at the Prefontaine Classic in early July, when he took down a senior 200m field in 19.75s, beating Tebogo in the process. Big personal bests this season means he is up to joint-fifth and third on the men’s under-20 lists for 100m and 200m respectively.