Is anyone outside of the Carolinas and Texas really looking forward to watching the Carolina Panthers or the Houston Texans this upcoming season? Maybe not.
But how about watching the Carolina Panthers and the Houston Texans?
Around the NFL writer Nick Shook recently listed his top 10 games of the 2023 campaign. Coming in at No. 10 is the matchup between the teams who held the first two picks from last week’s annual announcing of names.
Shook writes:
Thank you, 2023 NFL Draft, for making this into a must-see event. The Panthers and Texans might not find themselves among the elite Super Bowl contenders this season, but because they each selected their quarterbacks of the future (Bryce Young for Carolina and C.J. Stroud for Houston) with the top two overall picks in April, they’re all but guaranteed a large audience when they face each other. Alabama’s Young and Ohio State’s Stroud watched their teammates battle in the 2021 College Football Playoff National Championship, but the two QBs never got to square off directly in college. The closest they’ve had to a true showdown came off the field, in the 2021 Heisman Trophy voting, which Young won by a significant margin. Finally, we’ll get our first chance to see who can lead their team to victory over the other.
Being that the paths of Young and Stroud have been crossing since their middle school days, it only seems appropriate that they’ll be facing off against one another in their rookie years. And as Shook notes, it’ll be the first actual face-off between the California kids.
Now, we’re just awaiting the date. (By the way, Week 1 sounds great, doesn’t it?)
