The Carolina Panthers may have been leaning and rocking with the same guy all along.
Peter King of NBC Sports was featured on Wednesday’s episode of the Ross Tucker Football Podcast, where he discussed the current tide of the 2023 NFL draft’s No. 1 overall pick. And as he’s previously reported, King believes the Panthers have a number of influential voices over on 800 South Mint Street who favor University of Alabama’s Bryce Young—perhaps as far back to when they traded into the top spot.
“As it was told to me that weekend—and I’m gonna use this word because it’s exactly the word that was used to me—there are people in that building who had ‘leanings.’ And I believe those leanings, now, were to Bryce Young.”
King, in his latest “Football Morning in America” column, noted that there’s fire to go with the smoke surrounding Carolina’s interest in Young. As a result of the chatter, the 2021 Heisman Trophy winner has suddenly become a pretty hefty favorite to be selected atop the board.
To get there, Young surpassed Ohio State University’s C.J. Stroud—who was the lead dog in the eyes of many when the Panthers first acquired the pick. But King goes on to say that head coach Frank Reich’s supposed hankering for height may just be a bit of innuendo in this case.
“Everybody at first thought it was C.J. Stroud because, as I later wrote, Frank Reich has coached in the NFL for 17 years—either as a position coach, coordinator or head coach,” he added. “Six of those games were started by quarterbacks who were under 6-4 And Frank Reich is a big guy—he’s 6-3 or 6-4. He was a quarterback in the NFL at a time when quarterback was a position of land of the giants.”
In fact, Reich himself said during his presser back on March 20 that he wouldn’t rule out Young over his smaller 5-foot-10, 204-pound frame.
“It’s like everybody says—everything matters,” he said. “All those conversations matter, especially when it’s Scott Fitterer. It’s the GM. And he’s talking about a guy like Russell Wilson . . . who, by the way, I had a very high grade on.
“You don’t have to read anything into that. But I don’t mind telling you I had a high grade on Russell Wilson. But don’t read anything into it, I’m just sayin’ that. ‘Cause all these people puttin’ this label on me that I only work with big quarterbacks. Don’t read anything into that.”
Well, he told you so.
