CHARLOTTE — The first thing to know is that Panthers quarterback Andy Dalton and his family are safe.

That includes Wynnie, the family's mini goldendoodle, who was in the car with Dalton and his wife and kids when they were involved in a traffic accident Tuesday afternoon.

"Thankful for the Lord's protection through the whole situation," Dalton said Wednesday in the locker room after he was held out of practice. "Obviously, a scary deal. Never want anything like that to happen, but thankful that everybody's doing all right."

The Daltons (and Wynnie) were picking up the kids from school, close to their South Charlotte home, planning on a normal evening of tennis lessons and baseball practice. But life interferes with normal all the time, and Tuesday afternoon, it came in the form of another car, a sudden stop, airbags deploying, and loud noises.

"It was scary. It was the first time they had kind of gone through something like that," Dalton said of his three children. "They were pretty shaken up by it and I think everybody is healthy, which was the number one thing that we were thankful for. And now it's a great lesson for us as parents, for them, as kids to make sure you have your seatbelt on all the things that go into it and the priority of the importance of all that.

"So there's definitely some teaching moments in there, and I'm thankful to have that with everybody being healthy."

With the important stuff out of the way first, there is the small matter of the professional complication of a sprained thumb on his right (throwing) hand for someone who throws things for a living.

"I thought pretty quick that something was up," Dalton said. "So after going through the evaluation and everything, I'm thankful it is what it is because it could have been worse."

Of course, it's not great as it is.

On the practice field, Dalton stood and watched with his right hand jammed into the pocket of the hoodie he wore under his jersey. As he talked to reporters in the locker room, that same right hand was tucked safely into the pocket of his shorts so as to give no clues as to what it looked like.

He admitted it was painful and that he couldn't grip the ball or throw it at all today. That's part of the reason head coach Dave Canales has already told the team that Bryce Young would start this week in Denver, with the hope that Dalton could recover in time to be the backup.

Canales avoided the questions about the long-term status of the job — Young started the first two before Dalton took over, and Canales had said Monday that would continue to be the case before the accident. But he didn't get into any speculation about the future.

"We're going to evaluate Andy's thumb, and we'll go week to week with our decision," Canales said. "Dan (Morgan), Brandt (Tilis), and I will talk together about the right thing to do for the team."

Dalton, likewise, wasn't getting dragged into hypothetical discussions about the future. He signed here to be a backup to someone more than a month before the draft in 2023, and then Young arrived with the first overall pick. So he came here to not necessarily play, and this chance to start (which began well with a win at Las Vegas) was something he was grateful for a week short of his 37th birthday.

"I'm not worried about that right now," Dalton said of his role. "I'm just trying to get back healthy, and once that happens, we'll go from there; we'll see how this thing all shakes out. I've been a part of it in different situations. So we'll see how it goes. But the main goal is just to get healthy. . . .

"I mean, you've got to think big picture. It's easy to find all the little things that you could be disappointed in. But at the end of the day, I'm thankful that my family is good and thankful that the other guy appeared to be good. And so I think it's all about perspective."