When did Carolina Panthers head coach Frank Reich know exactly when Bryce Young was his guy? Peter King has the answer.
In his newest edition of “Football Morning in America,” King asked Reich about the moment that “clinched his conviction” on making the Alabama quarterback this year’s No. 1 overall pick. Reich pinpointed the team’s top-30 visit with Young, one in which he amazingly recalled an impressive blocking scheme from a play during garbage time in his freshman season.
King writes:
“Bryce right there called a five-man slide, which is an incredibly smart and incredibly risky call,” Reich said, watching the play while dictating a voice note to me. “If you’re going to call a five-man slide, you have to be 100 percent sure you can bring that [right] tackle over. Because if you bring him and that [left defensive] end comes, you’re in trouble. And just watch the play—how smooth the call is, how sure he is. He saw overload pressure to his left, he figured he wasn’t getting pressure to his right, he had the line all move left to compensate—and he even got the back to cover a blitzer. Just look how easy he made it look.”
Reich then added the following praise:
“That play just confirmed everything we were thinking and already know. Just confirmed the level of football IQ he has that’s on par with Peyton [Manning], [Matt] Ryan, [Philip] Rivers, [Andrew] Luck. I’m telling you: There are quarterbacks in the NFL who haven’t done what he did right there—and he did it easily in his true freshman year in college. To have the confidence to make that call for Alabama in his second college game. Unreal.”
Whether it was as a head coach, offensive coordinator or quarterbacks coach, Reich got the opportunity to work with each one of those big-name, big-brained quarterbacks. And if he’s saying that his newest one has smarts comparable to that group, then the Panthers are seemingly in good hands and headspace.
