Inside Panthers’ Process Before Drafting Bryce Young No. 1

It was last Monday, and Panthers GM Scott Fitterer had just finished a meeting with Frank Reich’s coaching staff, scheduled for one final discussion on what Carolina would do with the No. 1 pick it spent so much to get. Fitterer had been disciplined in never making a declaration to anyone on what the team would do, and that bled over into the meeting. He danced around it, making it obvious enough to everyone for the people in the room to order their kids No. 9 jerseys for the fall, without ever actually saying it.

But the time was coming, and someone would have to put it into words, eventually.

So Fitterer sauntered into Reich’s office and matter-of-factly spit it out.

All right, man, the GM said jokingly, who are we taking?

Both smiled. Reich started laughing.

Yeah, it’s Bryce, Reich responded.

Some 72 hours later, it’d be done, and the book would be closed on a months-long process leading to a final call that, ultimately, will almost certainly either make or break Fitterer and Reich in Charlotte. There were dinners, and 30 visits, and pro days, and combine interviews. There was the big trade, and there were draft meetings, and a quarterback who was the leader wire to wire—even as the team tried to troubleshoot the decision every which way.

In the end, there was Young, and Young alone atop the Panthers’ draft board, the tag waiting to be pulled just after 8 p.m. ET in a meeting at Bank of America Stadium. And there was a building full of people who were there the whole way waiting for confirmation that night of what they all had known was coming for a while.

That knowledge is why the moment between Reich and Fitterer was so anticlimactic. It’s also why being there for the first pick Thursday night, for most of the scouts and coaches, was like being invited to a wedding—you knew who’d be trading vows—and why when Young arrived Friday, the only memorable thing he told the staff was, This feels right.

For everyone, it had felt right for a while. With more time, for the Panthers, it only felt more right.

And in the MMQB column this week, with the draft behind us, we’re going to explain why.

The NFL draft is done, it’s the Monday after and in this week’s MMQB, we’ve got …

• An inside look at the fantastic story in Dallas, where Cowboys scout Chris Vaughn made the call to his son Deuce to let him know his dad’s team was drafting him.

• Some flowers for new Cardinals GM Monti Ossenfort, who was perhaps the league’s most aggressive mover in his first draft at the helm.

• A deep dive into how the Lions’ Plan A came undone and how quickly GM Brad Holmes was able to recover.

• More on the impact of Lamar Jackson’s deal in Baltimore.

But we’re starting right at the top of the draft.

Fitterer can still remember the first time he really laid eyes on Young, outside of quick looks here and there when Tide games showed up on the TV or while he was studying other players on tape.

He was home with his wife and son in Charlotte, the night before the Panthers played in Atlanta in December 2021, and the Heisman ceremony was on. Young won it, of course, and, as he made his way to the stage and launched into his speech, the Fitterers became relatively enthralled with the spindly 20-year-old signal-caller, who, at the time, may have looked to the uninitiated more like a high school point guard than an Alabama quarterback.

Fitterer and his wife had the same feeling—this guy is unique—and then talked about how great it’d be to find someone like that to lead your team.

Almost exactly a year later, the process of making Young that guy began, in earnest.

As the 2022 season quickly came undone and coach Matt Rhule was fired, Panthers owner David Tepper had periodic conversations with his football people on the direction of the team and what was next. They’d make decisions to trade Christian McCaffrey and keep Brian Burns, and the process started to inform them on where they were. They had a stout defense with a young cornerstone. The offensive line had come together to drive a run game that dominated with Steve Wilks as interim coach. What was missing was obvious.

“I think once we traded Baker [Mayfield], and Sam [Darnold] came back [from injury],” Fitterer said Sunday. “Sam actually played well this past year. But you have two swings at it, you have high hopes for both Sam and Baker when they got here and, at a certain point, I remember talking to Mr. Tepper and [assistant GM] Dan [Morgan] and we’re like, We gotta just draft and build our own. Even if Baker hit or Sam hit, it was going to be a lot of money to renew these guys, and how do you build a team properly unless it’s like a top-five quarterback?

“How do you really build a team properly to support him? So we thought the rookie way was the right way to go, to draft and develop, and fix the problem rather than taking swings here and there. … Eventually, you just have to draft and develop your own guy.”

That Fitterer was already thinking about it was evidenced in his travels. Before the team’s Halloween weekend game in Atlanta, Fitterer snuck away to Knoxville to get a look at Will Levis and Hendon Hooker when Tennessee hosted Kentucky. Three weeks later, with the Panthers in Baltimore, Fitterer went to see Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud at Maryland. He didn’t get to see Alabama live, but that exercise, and the ongoing conversations, led to the conclusion.

It was obvious what the Panthers had to do.

But that would be backburnered for the coaching search, and then the search for assistants for Reich on what quickly became an all-star staff. Fitterer, Morgan and the scouts, in the meantime, slowly chipped away at the tape of Young, Stroud, Hooker, Levis and Florida’s Anthony Richardson. Eventually, after working to install an offense and plan OTAs, Reich, OC Thomas Brown, QBs coach Josh McCown and senior assistant Jim Caldwell dove in.

And they came back with themes on Young that were common among the scouts. He stayed in—and won from—the pocket, despite his lack of stature. You could see his head turn back there, proof he was working through progressions and manipulating coverage with his eyes. He let plays develop, while always playing on time and with precision.

Reich told others he wanted a quarterback who understood the position and knew what it’d take to truly master it. It’d be rare to find someone who had that at Young’s age.

But, at least on tape, it sure looked like he did.

By the time the Panthers got to the combine, they’d done enough work on tape to be comfortable with at least two of the quarterbacks in the class (my sense is those two were Young and Stroud), and that gave Fitterer time to try to get ahead of the market on trading up.

They had the ninth pick. As we chronicled in March, Fitterer and Bears GM Ryan Poles met at Lucas Oil Stadium, and at an Indianapolis hotel a little out of the way (the Hyatt) from the normal NFL hustle and bustle in the city, which Poles had booked to keep his meetings quiet. As the week after the combine wore on, the Texans first came strong, and it looked like the Bears would deal twice, with Houston coming up to No. 1 and Carolina to No. 2. But Fitterer kept after Poles, the Texans got cold feet and the Panthers got to the top of the draft.

Fitterer didn’t want to give up a third first-round pick, and Poles’s desire to get a receiver to help Justin Fields (and get himself a better read on his young quarterback) led the teams to agree to a deal with two first-rounders, and second-rounders this year and in 2025, and DJ Moore going to Chicago. And at that point, while Fitterer didn’t have a decision yet on whom he’d take, he did have a leader.

“Coming out of our February meetings with scouts, Bryce was probably the leader,” Fitterer says. “But we had committed to keeping an open process and we really did. It’s not just like b.s. We really did go into this like, This is such an important decision for our organization. Let’s not lock in [on someone] in February and say ‘This is our guy.’ And so we went through it. … There’s some really impressive guys. There’s some real guys in this quarterback group.

“But the one thing about Bryce is he just was so steady all the way through the process, and every time we sat with him was like, S—, this guy’s special.”

And yet, again, Fitterer, Reich and their staffs resisted calling the fight any earlier than they had to. Stroud would make a run at it. Richardson, who had some similarities to Josh Allen (whom Morgan was with in Buffalo), did, too. So Young would have to keep checking boxes.

He’d get the chance to once the trade was finished.

That Friday afternoon, Fitterer called his assistant, Claire, and asked for her to start planning for a sizable Panthers contingent to hit the road. Because Stroud, Young and Levis had back-to-back-to-back pro days in Columbus, Tuscaloosa and Lexington, flying commercial would be impossible, so the group would fly private—with Fitterer; Reich; the offensive coaches; Morgan; lead negotiator Samir Suleiman; Tepper; and his wife, Nicole, on the list.

By Monday, March 13, the plans were set for the crew to see those three quarterbacks the following week and Richardson in Gainesville the week after.

On March 22, the Panthers’ traveling party watched an impressive display from Stroud, one that might have been enough to prompt another look at his tape from the fall, and then boarded the jet for Alabama. That night, they went to Evangeline’s, a posh Tuscaloosa eatery maybe a mile from campus.

As the food was coming, Caldwell asked Young to detail his process. He started by explaining a Saturday night, with his physical recovery from an SEC game. He went into Sunday, from grading the previous day’s tape, to diving into the next week’s game plan and trying to learn it well enough to present it to his teammates Monday. He kept going, and going, and, after about 10 minutes, he was in mid-day Tuesday and those at the table were looking at each other. Reich looked at pretty much everyone with a smirk. Tepper laughed.

Young came off like a battle-tested NFL quarterback, not some wet-behind-the-ears college kid confronted with a hedge-fund billionaire and his table full of NFL execs and coaches.

“It’s like you’re sitting with a 40-year-old man and the level of detail of his answers,” Fitterer says. “You could ask him a simple question, and he gives so much detail and thought to each question. It was pretty cool.”

The next day, more of the same. Fitterer wanted to see Young’s arm strength in person, and that meant training on deep sideline routes and drive throws through the middle of the field. His arm was never going to be Richardson’s, of course. But what the GM and coaches saw was plenty. He could get the ball to difficult spots and change speeds like a pitcher to throw the right ball every time.

While all that was happening, Nicole Tepper played her part, sidling up to Young’s parents while their son put his best foot forward. The owner’s wife knew her best role in all this, which was to try to get to know the people, rather than just the player.

“Nicole’s a very good judge of character, and that’s why she’s involved in this,” Fitterer says. “She sees it from a different viewpoint and she’s got a really strong b.s. meter. So it was great. … We may fall in love with the guys as players and kind of turn our head, kind of dismiss certain things. She’s got that intelligence to dial in.”

And on Young?

“She loved him,” Fitterer continues.

Her husband, of course, would contribute, too, and in an interesting way—it wasn’t so much about what he thought as what he knew. And what he knew was that his team would have its best shot at getting the decision right with as thorough a process as possible.

So as sure as most of the crew might’ve been after Young’s pro day, there was still work left to be done.

“[Tepper] is all about process,” Fitterer says. “He’s not about the evaluating. He’s not going to sit there and say, Hey, listen, I think this guy’s got a great arm. That’s not his world, and Dave’s smart enough to realize that. He doesn’t want to influence it that way. He just wants to make sure that we’re looking at it from every viewpoint and challenging ourselves, and that we have the data behind our decisions—that we’re not just looking at it from a scouting standpoint, that we have all the back-checks that we can use that are out there.

“Are we doing enough? Are we testing these guys enough? Do we know enough about their psychological makeup and competitiveness? He just keeps asking questions. And he’s not challenging us. He’s just making us think. Are we thinking about this properly?”

To make sure they were, there was one box left to check.

Young’s 30 visit was scheduled for April 11, and there’d be no dinner on the Monday night before. The quarterback was delayed flying into Charlotte, and scouting intern Caden McCloughan, son of former Washington and San Francisco GM Scot McCloughan, picked him at the airport between midnight and 1 a.m. McCloughan reported back to Fitterer that Young, upon arrival, was all smiles—thankful and respectful, and looking forward to the next day.

Young got dropped off at his hotel, showed up bright, early and as scheduled in the morning, and never uttered a word about the long night he’d just fought through.

The quarterback met with the team’s sports science people and player engagement people, then Fitterer and Morgan together in the GM’s office before heading into a meeting room to sit down with Reich, Brown, Caldwell, McCown and young assistant Parks Frazier. The coaches started drawing concepts and plays on the board. It was easy to tell Young was in his element.

“They start putting things on the board. And they’re teaching them different plays and different concepts, just to see how much he really knows,” Fitterer says. “And he’s totally grasping it and he’s soaking it up. He is as impressive as you would think in terms of learning and retaining—and he’s kind of unflappable, too. Even someone talking in his ear the whole time, trying to distract him, he can talk and write and kind of keep his focus.”

By then, the idea Fitterer had once floated—that he’d be willing to move off the first pick and go back down a spot if there were multiple quarterbacks he liked—had melted away.

When Fitterer first raised the idea, it was with the insistence that it’d take a lot for him to consider moving off the first pick. The Panthers had actually gone through an exercise to prepare for what they’d do if a Godfather offer came while they were on the clock. Turned out, the price would’ve been more than just a 2024 first-round pick. But instead of someone else convincing the GM it might be worth looking at his options, Young’s steadiness in holding his lead firmly planted the Panthers’ feet in the ground at No. 1.

After the 30 visit, it was essentially over.

Let’s take the guy we have conviction on, Fitterer said in one draft meeting.

At the end of the next week, on April 20 and 21, the Thursday and Friday before the draft, Fitterer and the personnel staff again met with the coaches. They didn’t spend a second on the top quarterbacks, going through every other position, because the GM didn’t want his decision to leak out. They started the meetings with the Day 3 quarterbacks, then went to the receivers and the linemen, never doubling back to work over the top signal-callers.

The next Monday, Fitterer and Reich called the coaches in. And after that meeting, quietly, the GM and coach nailed down their decision. A small group that included the Teppers, Morgan, VP Adrian Wilson, Reich and Fitterer were in the know. No one else really was.

Even though, really, by then, everyone did know.

By the final days, all those boxes were checked, for better or worse.

On the latter, there was the one flaw in Young’s file—his height and weight, with the questions similar to the ones Fitterer and Morgan had once seen Russell Wilson face in their time as Seattle personnel men. From that experience, they knew one question to ask was how the shorter quarterback would see the middle of the field.

Panthers analytics chief Taylor Rajack helped take care of that one, creating a heat map and coming up with statistics that showed Young was among college football’s most accurate quarterbacks in the short areas, over the first eight to 10 yards, over the middle, with a completion percentage to match. It showed that in the forest of linemen, and with all the traffic in the middle of the field, Young could create vision through movement and awareness, the same way Drew Brees once could.

So with all that work complete, there was only one thing left to do.

Shortly after 8 p.m. ET Thursday, Roger Goodell announced the start of the draft as Fitterer, Reich, the Teppers and all the Panthers coaches and scouts watched on TV. The league had asked that they wait at least five minutes. So with five of the allotted 10 minutes left, Fitterer said to the room, All right, let’s turn in the name, before pausing and letting the whole thing go:

Bryce Young.

The significance of that moment wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.

Neither was how obvious, by then, the decision had become.