…the 2023 class isn’t exactly perfect. It has potential, to be sure. It also has potholes.
“I’d say it’s a risky group,” says a veteran NFC quarterbacks coach. “There’s not a clear-cut guy—there’s no Andrew Luck, no Joe Burrow, no Trevor Lawrence. I’m glad we don’t need one. … I’d said the least amount of risk is with [C.J.] Stroud, because he has size, arm talent and a lot of production in the Big Ten, but he’s not a real big creator. They all have flaws.”
The consensus is that this crew is at once enticing and imperfect. Here, more specifically, is how the league sees each of the top guys.
Bryce Young
Ceiling comp: Shorter, more improvisational Drew Brees
There’s little disagreement on what a taller, bigger Young would be. “Other than his size,” says one AFC OC, “he does everything the way you want a quarterback to do it—great accuracy, great vision, moves well in the pocket, and, as a testament to him, he’s not throwing to the guys Tua [Tagovailoa] and Mac [Jones] were.” An NFC passing-game coordinator adds, “The instincts stand out, first and foremost, his eyes, his feel for the game. His arm is good enough, not great, but the other thing he has is his anticipation. How well he can see the game makes up for the arm. … And he plays with his eyes up at all times. There are very few times he’s just looking to run. He remains a passer at all times.” Another NFC OC adds, “You see the point guard of the offense—poise, instincts, he’s twitchy, a real twitchy athlete, twitchy arm, accuracy, throws with anticipation, his pocket movement, he’s tough in pocket.” Which is where some “smaller, slighter Joe Burrow” comps are coming from, and how the Steph Curry comps came to be, too.
Young has also been a home run hitter in just about all his meetings. “The intangibles with him are off the charts,” says an AFC passing-game coordinator. “We [met with] him … he just has a great presence. He’s laid back, confident. He’s definitely comfortable being himself. Just seems like overall as likable a guy as you’ll find.” Young’s score of 98 on the S2 test, which beat high-scorers Burrow, Josh Allen and Justin Fields, is mirrored by his mastery of the pro-style Alabama scheme he ran, one that skewed away from the more RPO-heavy looks the Tide had run in recent years, to take advantage of his mind for the game.
With all that established, his size is his size. He was listed at 194 pounds at Bama, weighed 204 at the combine, didn’t work out there, then chose not to weigh in before he did work out at his pro day. Which only furthers concern over what his playing weight will be in the pros, and the lack of a precedent for someone his size. “I like everything about Bryce—great interview, great intelligence, feel, instincts, he’s an accurate passer—but I am concerned about his size,” says an NFC quarterbacks coach. “I don’t like his bone structure. It’s different than [Drew] Brees or [Russell] Wilson. I didn’t like Teddy Bridgewater’s bone structure, either. It’s still a big man’s game. Maybe he’ll play for 20 years, and I’ll be wrong. But the game’s changed.”
Another concern related to his size is that at Alabama, Young was deployed heavily out of the shotgun, and plenty of NFL folks figured that was done to keep his vision clean—so if you play under center, or with the quarterback’s back to the line of scrimmage a lot, there is projection here. And there were times, to some, where he played too much on his toes, or couldn’t flick the ball out of tight spaces because of his stature. “Where he struggles,” says the AFC passing-game coordinator, “is when the pocket gets pushed into him. He can get overwhelmed.”
An NFC quarterbacks coach said that happens, he thinks, because “his arm’s not strong. It’s strong enough. But there’s not a lot of leeway. He needs to be on time, and usually is, because he doesn’t have the arm strength to make up for it. He can’t throw it harder to get it there. … He makes up for some of it because he can move, throw from different platforms, throw it quick, move people with his eyes, and throw a guy open. He sees it, and the ball comes out of his hand faster than anyone else, as fast as I’ve seen. It’s like he has a fiber-optic cable in his body, and everyone else is on dial up. But that’s still something to manage.”
One other small drawback? His footwork needs fine-tuning, but that, most of these coaches believe, could be cleaned up over an offseason or two.
C.J. Stroud
Ceiling comp: Shorter, quicker Matt Ryan
As coaches have studied the class, Stroud seems to have settled in as the quarterback who you have to project the least on. “Finally, the light bulb went on for me with him,” says an NFC quarterbacks coach. “I love him. He’s the safest pick of these top guys, and if I’m Carolina, I pick him [No. 1]. He does everything well. What’s missing comes down to running. He’s shown he can run; he just doesn’t, or hasn’t shown it consistently, like he did in the Georgia game, where he can create a play outside the play that was called. … It’s like with [Kirk] Cousins—what’s keeping him from being a blue-chip player is how much he does on his own. … But he’s the best passer of the class, he throws the appropriate ball almost every time, right amount of air, location, it’s on time, and it’s easy for him. He’s very natural.” An NFC passing-game coordinator adds, “He’s definitely the purest passer of the group, and one of the more pure passers to come out in a while. He’s accurate to all levels, understands how to pace the ball, and throws a really catchable ball underneath.” And an AFC pass-game coordinator piggybacks on that, saying, “He throws it really well. I’m not sure what his elite trait is. But I like him. I think he’s solid player and a really accurate passer.”
What makes Stroud’s evaluation a bit difficult for teams is how that Georgia game—through which Stroud shined, playing the toughest, most talented defense he faced as a collegian—looked different from all his other starts. It was like he was answering all the questions at once. “The athleticism is the only question, and against Georgia, he moves around, he eludes the rush,” says an NFC offensive coordinator. “And you see arm strength, the ability to throw the football, the decision-making was really good. He’s not a runner, but in a drop-back game, you saw he was good enough to avoid and not take sacks.” Another NFC quarterbacks coach adds, “You watch that Georgia game; it’s really good. … It’s possible the light just turned on for him. The game is changing with guys who can create, so it could be as simple as him watching guys like [Patrick] Mahomes, Allen, and saying, I can do that. There’s a fine line coaching that, too, but they seemed to get there against Georgia.”
Another NFC offensive coordinator mentioned a bit of a robotic delivery with Stroud that is common in quarterbacks who’ve come out of Ohio State, but agreed with a few others that Ryan Day and the Buckeyes staff seemed to be giving Stroud a little more responsibility at the line than they had with Dwayne Haskins and Justin Fields, which is a good sign that he’ll adapt easily to an NFL offense. “With Dwayne and Justin, the types of concepts they had, they were half-field reads, high-lows, easy stuff for colleges to do,” says our first NFC QBs coach. “In a lot of cases, it was read the corner and go. A good college offense. And with C.J., you saw more full-field reads, more back-to-the-defense play-action, NFL-style reads that are difficult. That got me off [the comparison]. The thing that is still there, is he had better players around him than everyone. His wideouts would be worse in Carolina than they were last year at Ohio State.”
Conversely, there have been some questions about maturity (in how he’s taken criticism from the outside) and willingness to stick his nose in there and run (another one he answered against Georgia). “Sometimes, he’d turn down runs,” says an AFC OC. “He doesn’t always make plays with his legs. He’s not a dynamic athlete by any stretch. He’s good enough. If he plays like he did in playoffs, you’re getting a really good quarterback—you’re betting a little on that being what you’ll get. Hopefully, he’s grown and matured through it. He’s a really good player, got all you need to ask for in a quarterback. He’s first overall-worthy.”
And some of that growth will have to go back to how he handles things getting jumbled and chaotic on him. “I saw some teams heat him up playing Cover Zero,” says an NFC passing-game coordinator. “And I’d love to get answers from him of what he was seeing, and where he was going on those looks. … I know he can process. But in those situations, does he click through it, one, two, three? I want to see it more. … You see a lot more [of him] throwing in rhythm on one-hitch timing.”
From a technical standpoint, too, there’s a little that can be worked over, to make him more efficient. “He gets a little wide in his base,” says our NFC OC. And there was some concern over an aptitude test score, but he did well enough in his meetings to allay some of those worries.
