Is Bryce Young ready to upend decades of NFL conventional wisdom?
Arkansas defensive coordinator Barry Odom came out of the locker room in Tuscaloosa in November 2021 to get a peek at Bryce Young, Alabama's undersize wunderkind quarterback, in pregame warmups.
Young's stirring sophomore season put him atop the Heisman Trophy race and defied football conventions, and Odom couldn't help wanting to catch a field-level glimpse of the sport's breakout star. Alabama listed Young at 6-foot, 194 pounds, but everyone knew those numbers meant he was essentially stepping on a phone book and his weight was artificially padded by a few slabs of Tuscaloosa's famous Dreamland ribs.
In the chill of the early afternoon, Odom quickly understood the scope of his challenge. As so often happened in a decorated high school and college career, Young's arm talent overshadowed his modest size.
"He's got this quick release and the ball explodes off his hand," said Odom, who is now UNLV's head coach. "He's making every throw across the field in warmups. I knew at that point it was probably going to be a long night."
Young majored in delivering opponents long nights in his two seasons as a starter at Alabama, where he went 23-4. That afternoon against Odom's defense, he delivered five touchdown passes and no interceptions on his way to winning the Heisman.
In 2022, he threw for 32 touchdowns and just five interceptions while playing with a drastically inferior receiving corps. In just two seasons as a starter, he's the second-leading passer in Alabama history (8,356 yards).
As the NFL draft kicks off Thursday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN/ABC/ESPN app), that caliber of consistent production has made Young the prohibitive favorite to be the No. 1 overall pick. At 5-foot-10, he'd be just the third quarterback in the common draft era shorter than 6 feet to be picked in the first round, joining Kyler Murray and Johnny Manziel.
Searching NFL combine data back to 1999, Young would also be the lightest quarterback taken in the first round. Young weighed in at 204 at the combine, and the list of quarterbacks weighing less includes a flurry of forgettable names like Aaron Brooks (203), Trace McSorley (202) and Seneca Wallace (196).
That's the compelling conundrum ultimately facing the Carolina Panthers at No. 1 -- can they use a treasured piece of draft real estate on a player whose size makes him an exception? Young looms as an anomaly even among the smaller quarterbacks, as he's a pure pocket passer. Just 12% of his passes in college came outside of the pocket, per ESPN Stats & Information research.
"If you pick him, you are saying that he's the outlier in the history of the league," said a veteran NFL executive. "Kyler Murray was that size, but a little sturdier built and ran low 4.4s.
