Who will Carolina Panthers pick at No. 1 in the NFL draft? This is what they should do
READ MORE
2023 NFL Draft
The Carolina Panthers hold the top pick in this year’s draft and there’s plenty of intrigue surrounding the team and what it will do. Check out all our pre-draft coverage here.
Expand All
With the first pick in the NFL draft, the Carolina Panthers select….
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? That’s the question that has prompted the Panthers to risk their future as they try to answer it.
And the answer is Bryce Young.
That’s who the Panthers should pick Thursday night, when they officially turn in their choice at around 8 p.m. Eastern time in Kansas City at the 2023 NFL draft.
Young isn’t the only quarterback who will succeed in this draft class, and he’s also the most vertically challenged of all of them.
But Young has it — that quality that elevates teammates, that split-second decision-making that becomes the difference between a touchdown and an interception.
The Panthers risked a lot of their future trading up from No. 9 to No. 1, and the deal makes sense only if Carolina gets the first pick right. They have been in a quarterback quandary ever since Cam Newton’s shoulder got blasted in Pittsburgh halfway through the 2018 season. The team has never been the same since.
Young isn’t flawless and he isn’t no-risk, because no QBs ever are. Size-wise, the 5-10, 204-pound Young looks like Newton’s little brother, and it’s always going to be that way. You can wish him taller all you want, but it won’t change a thing.
But have you ever watched Young play for an extended period? If you have, then you know. There is nothing Young does poorly, but a dozen things he does well. He reads, he throws, he runs, he thinks, he leads. He can move, too, but he’s a throw-first QB, which should provide him with a longer career.
And with Carolina, he would walk into a situation built for a rookie quarterback to succeed.
The Panthers are going to return their entire offensive line. They acquired Pro Bowl running back Miles Sanders in free agency. They hired veteran QB Andy Dalton to be the backup and help mentor whichever rookie they decide to pick. They lost wide receiver DJ Moore in the trade up from No. 9 to No. 1, but have tried hard to add wide receivers and tight ends to make up for that.
Carolina might succeed with C.J. Stroud, Anthony Richardson or Will Levis at QB, and those are the other three top QBs in this draft class. All three will likely be gone within the first 10 picks, and maybe within the first five. All three are at least five inches taller than Young is.
But if I were risking my job on this pick — and to some extent, general manager Scott Fitterer and new head coach Frank Reich are — I’d choose Young anyway.
He exudes calmness and confidence when the pocket is breaking down, and the great ones all have that. He played with spectacular teammates at Alabama, yes, but he also played against spectacular opponents. The SEC is as close to NFL Sundays as it gets on the college level and Young excelled there, over and over.
My second-favorite draft-eligible QB, for what it’s worth, is Stroud. He may be a star as well, but I think Young will be a slightly more consistent player.
At the Panthers’ pre-draft press conference Tuesday, the Panthers brass was careful not to say they had already decided on Young. But they also seemed to have thought pretty far down the road about what they would do with Young once he gets here, in terms of keeping on weight to allow him to absorb the pounding all NFL QBs take.
“Nutritionally, we can do some things to educate him. We get him in the weight room,” Fitterer said. “You can see, when you really look at his lower body, his lower body’s gotten bigger. He’s put on a lot of mass down there. A lot of times quarterbacks don’t want to lift (weights concentrating on their) upper body, because you get a little bit bound-up. But there’s some things. He’s going to naturally put on size as he ages as well.”
Fitterer used the example of Russell Wilson, whom everyone would love Young to turn into. Wilson, Fitterer said, began his career at around 206 pounds but later played at close to 220.
The size question will undoubtedly bother Reich a little. In a stat that has been bandied about for weeks, it has been noted that Reich has never had a starting quarterback shorter than 6-foot-2 in his 17 NFL seasons as either an assistant or head coach.
But Reich — a 6-4 former NFL QB himself — also has pointed out that the label of him only liking tall quarterbacks is incorrect, and that he had a very high draft grade on the 5-11 Wilson way back in 2012.
Like Wilson, Young finds a way to get throws off. Fitterer said Tuesday that in his final collegiate season that Wilson — who started his college career at N.C. State — had three balls batted down at the line and Young had only two. By contrast, Baker Mayfield would have that many batted balls in some individual games in 2022 for Carolina.
The biggest question with Young is whether he gets hurt, not whether he can throw the ball around an NFL stadium. But the Panthers have the best offensive line they’ve had in years to protect him. They’re going to have to take a chance on someone.
Young is the right call.
This story was originally published April 24, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Who will Carolina Panthers pick at No. 1 in the NFL draft? This is what they should do."
