Peter King believes the story for the Carolina Panthers and the 2023 NFL draft’s No. 1 overall pick could very well be about Bryce Young, and he’s sticking to it.
In his latest edition of “Football Morning in America,” the NBC Sports scribe doubles down on his senses about the Panthers and Young—whom reportedly has several “influential voices” in Carolina on his side.
King writes:
Though ESPN’s Chris Mortensen stressed the final call has not been made, the plugged-in Mort did say he thinks the Panthers “will stick with him when it’s time to turn in the card” on draft night. This jibes with what I wrote last week — that Young has a lot of fans in high places in the organization. I agree with Mortensen that it’s not a done deal, but the momentum toward Young is real. What’s interesting if the 5-10 Young goes before the 6-3 (and accomplished) C.J. Stroud is how it signifies how much the game has changed over the past few years. Young likes people comparing him to a point guard, a distributor of the ball to the open man, because it illustrates a lot about modern quarterbacking. In today’s game, a short quarterback can work better than a generation ago because it’s more of a horizontal, short-passing game overall.
The 2021 Heisman Trophy winner recently got one of those point guard comparisons from NFL insider Jordan Schultz of theScore. This past weekend, Schultz—who also projects Young as the eventual choice—reported that a couple teams are getting a “Steph Curry 2.0-like feel” from the Alabama quarterback.
So, will the Panthers really make that splash King, Mortensen and Schultz are thinking they’ll make?
