The New York Jets-Carolina Panthers game on Saturday was a different experience for quarterback Bryce Young, the first player selected in the 2023 NFL Draft.

“It was just a unique opportunity for me being able to play in the first NFL game,” Young said on Wednesday. “It was a preseason game, but still getting your first live, full-team snaps, that was great. That was fun.”

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But his pro debut wasn’t the only thing new about the game for Young: The Panthers didn’t score in a 27-point loss to the Jets.

During Young’s three seasons (as a starter and a backup) at Alabama, the Crimson Tide never scored fewer than 18 points in any game and scored at least 40 points in 28 of 41 contests.

Young said he understood the Carolina coaching staff had objectives in a preseason game that wouldn’t be in play during a regular-season game, but getting blanked – even though he was on the field for only the first three possessions – still smarted.

“We never break the huddle or go out there like, ‘Yeah, let’s not score,’” Young said. “That’s always the goal. And again, coach (Frank) Reich and the coaching staff, they have a plan, they have a reason for everything.”

Young will try again to get the Panthers on the scoreboard on Friday, when Carolina faces the New York Giants for its second preseason game at 6 p.m. CDT at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. NFL Network will televise the game.

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Reich said the Panthers coaching staff again would ask Young and his teammates to “run uphill.”

Reich said the Carolina game plan will “make it really simple so the guys don’t have to think and they can just go out and play and run our basic plays and we evaluate the one-on-ones. They don’t have to worry about fronts moving, backers moving. Receivers don’t have to worry about motion, shift alignments and funky things. They don’t have to worry about multiple formations, so that gives them an advantage to play faster.

“But when we do some of the things that we do to be multiple, as we say we are, that gives the players a little bit of an edge. It puts a little bit of a seed of doubt in the defense. It gives our guys a little bit of an edge. We’re not giving them that edge, and so, in essence, we’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to make you run uphill in this game,’ meaning, ‘We’re going to make it hard on you.’ We’re not going to do some of the little things we do to create an edge for you, so you got to make your own edge. And that’s a great opportunity for guys to step up and show us who can do that.”

While Young can expect to operate an offense that will “err on the side of not showing too much,” in Reich’s words, to regular-season opponents studying Carolina’s preseason film, the rookie quarterback will face a defense that will not handicap itself in that way.

Reich said Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale would not hold back in Friday’s preseason game.

“It’s going to be a really good challenge for our offense against their defense,” Reich said, “particularly just because Wink is very exotic in his pressure package. There’s going to be blitz zero, there’s going to be all kinds of pressures, and normally in a regular-season game, we are spending hours and hours and hours preparing for someone like Wink and that blitz package. And in a preseason game, you just don’t. You spend time, and I think we’ll do a good job. We’ve got a good plan against the pressures that they’ll bring, but we’re rotating a lot of guys through. It’s a lot of young guys seeing a lot of exotic pressures, so that gets me excited because we get to see how these guys – can they see it, can we function, can we operate against them? …

“This is a very unique challenge for a preseason game because they’re going to do what they’re going to do. They’re not holding anything back. This is just who he is and part of his personality. We look forward to it. It’ll be a good challenge.”

What might that mean for Young? Well, in his preseason debut, he was sacked and took two other hits in 11 snaps against the Jets’ second-team defense.

“There was no flinch,” Reich said about Young’s reaction to going down. “He didn’t get the jitters at all. No evidence from anything of being shaken — not in the huddle, not on the sideline. In fact, it was the exact opposite.”

What else did Reich see from Young’s debut that he liked?

“Just feel accuracy, the way he worked through progressions,” Reich said. “I liked the aggressive throw down the field to DJ (Chark). I liked the little, short completion in the right. You know, that man-to-man coverage, you need to make some completions on those tough coverages. I liked his demeanor when he got walloped.”

Young completed 4-of-6 passes for 21 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions against the Jets.

“Probably be similar to last game as far as play time, plus or minus,” Reich said about Young’s outlook for Friday night’s game. “As you guys know from what I’ve said, it’s kind of TBD. But just tell the guys, ‘Hey, we all got to get ready to play.’

“Obviously, want to have some success out there. Want to move the ball, make first downs, score some points, just play more consistently as an offensive unit, and then – as an offensive unit, this isn’t just Bryce – be better on third down and get our run game going a little bit. Just overall on offense, we need to have a better outing.”

Young has the same objective.

“The stuff that we did that we can build on, we got to keep doing that,” Young said, “and the stuff we got to get corrected, we’re working day in and day out to do that.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.