2023 NFL Draft Care/Don't Care: Where do Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud fit the best?

5 things I care about

Where the top QBs land

Quarterbacks are the talk of the town every draft season. This year, we have four guys for sure going in Round 1 (and we might even sneak in a fifth). I am beyond ready to see where they finally land.

Bryce Young sounds like he is the heavy favorite to go to Carolina. His height and weight will be a consistent talking point throughout his career, but he is a talented and exciting passer who will be the new face of a Panthers team that has had few national faces of late. The Panthers are also a good incubator for a young passer with a large, experienced coaching staff to help develop a quarterback, along with a strong offensive line and defense. Young is set up to succeed and beat his size-based odds — if this is indeed the pick.

C.J. Stroud once looked like the guy the Panthers were going to select with the first overall pick. Now, there’s talk that he might fall past the second pick if the Texans truly aren’t interested in any of the non-Young quarterbacks that high.

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I love Stroud’s game. He’s a highly accurate passer whom I think gets underrated as a mover and athlete. He has limited snaps under true pressure, having played with a great offensive line and elite receiver corps, but he doesn’t shy away from tough situations. Any team that takes him gets a player with a pro-ready floor and a ceiling that I think is often understated.

Anthony Richardson is unlike any quarterback we’ve seen enter the league. He is the most athletic quarterback ever tested at the NFL Scouting Combine, and while he’s often labeled as “raw,” I think he’s more so “inexperienced.” Richardson needs to grow and play with more consistency, but he shows you high-end processing traits to go with his strong arm. His elite athleticism actually gives him a good floor to play at some point in his rookie year, as a team can build an early career Jalen Hurts or Lamar Jackson style of offense while Richardson expands his passing portfolio. Those teams won games while those two developed. I believe Richardson’s next team will do the same earlier than expected while being able to fantasize about the highest possible future ceiling.

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If you think I’m trying to walk the line on Will Levis by constantly using a Ryan Tannehill comparison when discussing him, you’re correct. Levis has a strong arm and can move, but he’s not consistently accurate and makes bad decisions. While he played in NFL-style offenses in college, I think he’d function best in an offense that just allows him to “grip it and rip it” while hunting big chunk throws on play action, a la Tannehill’s years under Arthur Smith in Tennessee. Levis has enough good qualities to go off the board early in Round 1, even if I expect him to be the rockiest starter of these four — if he hits at all.

Ultimately, I think Hendon Hooker does sneak into Round 1. He comes from a weird offensive system in which it’s tough to find “Sunday throws” and enters the league older while rehabbing a torn ACL. There are a lot of red flags in his profile.

However, he does carry some nice NFL traits; Hooker is mobile, has a nice arm and shows flashes of good pocket presence. There are enough future quarterback-needy teams — Tampa Bay, Minnesota, etc. — that can convince themselves Hooker will hit his ceiling. He doesn’t need to see the field early for their team either, thanks to the player currently atop the quarterback depth chart.

The DeAndre Hopkins trade

Last year, we got two big-time veteran receiver trades on draft day: A.J. Brown to the Eagles and Marquise Brown to the Cardinals. I expect Arizona to be involved in another veteran receiver trade this year.

The Cardinals kept the Brown trade so quiet that he was actually at the Cardinals draft party during Round 1 in Arizona. Maybe they’ve similarly kept DeAndre Hopkins’ next home under wraps. Either way, if he’s getting moved, it’s going to come either Day 1 or, more likely, Day 2 of the NFL draft.

Hopkins is a tough player to value because he’s in his 30s, hasn’t been consistently on the field of late and carries a big salary. However, he has been great when available and doesn’t look like he’s lost much if any level of skill. Perhaps more importantly, he’s a true X-receiver. This draft class is light on translatable big-body, win-above-the-rim options at that position. That could make him uniquely more valuable than normal in the context of this receiver class, especially to teams looking to contend over the next two seasons that have a need for an X-receiver.

Will Quentin Johnston really fall out of Round 1?

It has been a whirlwind draft cycle for Quentin Johnston. At the end of the college football season, he looked like a top-15 lock, but now there are reports that he might fall to Round 2 of the draft.

This might sound like overly critical pre-draft nonsense, but I think some level of skepticism is warranted. It’s born of evaluators looking at Johnston’s tape with an eye for NFL translation, not collegiate performance. There is a difference.

That said, while I understand some of the critiques, Johnston should be a late-first-round pick. His film shows you a player who separates well against man coverage, though he lacks some of the nuance needed to be a great zone-beater. You see that Johnston has a determined and athletic approach to winning in the YAC game but struggles to consistently win in contested situations and possesses overall messy hand technique.

It’s a mixed bag. He’s not my top receiver prospect. That’s OK!

I view Johnston similarly to how I viewed Christian Watson in last year’s draft: a limited application player with upside worth banking on. I just have him one tier higher. Watson was an early Round 2 selection. Johnston should hear his name called late in the first round, if you’re asking me.

Does Jayden Reed sneak into Day 2?

Look, is this a little niche? Yes. But a big part of the draft process is finding “your guys.” If there’s one “my guy” in this receiver crop outside my top-five ranked players, it’s Jayden Reed.

Reed is a really solid route-runner who played all three receiver positions in college. You see him take reps and win against press coverage at X-receiver despite a smaller frame. He could easily continue to work as a flanker or slot receiver in the NFL, and there are plenty of translatable plays on his film for those roles. Reed also has the makings of great technique at the catch point, and if he just tightens up his fundamentals a bit, I think he’s two tweaks away from being a great prospect.

With this receiver class, we should all be rooting for niche favorites to land in the right spot on Day 2. We’re looking for a team with a climbable depth chart and a strong offensive ecosystem anchored by a good quarterback. There’s no receiver I am hoping ends up checking those boxes by the end of Friday more than Reed.

How the NFL views this OL class

While we obsess over quarterbacks, receivers and running backs — yes, I’m guilty of it, too — the offensive line draft picks made at the end of April can have a transformative effect.

My theory on the offensive line is that you’re often as good as your weakest link. One pick can really bolster the floor of an entire unit. Look at the Panthers and Ikem Ekwonu last year. Carolina’s offensive line had been a mess for years, but as soon as the sixth overall pick started to figure things out during his rookie year, the line turned around. Now the offensive line is a big reason the Panthers are considered a good landing spot for the quarterback at the No. 1 overall pick.

I can’t wait to see how the NFL views this offensive line crop. My colleague Charles McDonald is really high on this group. He has three linemen inside his top five overall players and six in the top-25. If these players turn out to be that good, a handful of teams could quickly turn their fortunes around on the front five.

5 things I don’t care about

Bijan Robinson’s eventual backfield mates

Wherever Bijan Robinson lands, he is going to be a Day 1 starter, a workhorse and bell cow back. He’s that good and that highly touted of a prospect.

Robinson is currently the betting favorite to be drafted eighth overall by the Falcons. I can’t get the image of him being drafted by the Commanders if he falls to them at Pick 16 out of my head, for a variety of reasons. Both of those teams have two second-year running backs who had promising rookie seasons: Tyler Allgeier and Brian Robinson, respectively. It’s no shade to those guys and their skill sets, but players like this are leapfrogged by talents such as Bijan as soon as the pick is made.

Think back to the Jets trading up for Breece Hall last year. New York got a solid rookie season out of Michael Carter in 2021 as a fourth-rounder. Hall quickly showed himself to be the better player and was distancing himself from Carter in the rotation prior to getting hurt.

Hall isn’t as good of a prospect as Robinson.

There will be a ton of digital ink spilled over the summer about concerns around Robinson losing work to another player in his NFL backfield. It’s probably not going to matter. The team that drafts Robinson will make him the starter and hand him at least 60% of the backfield touches the moment they turn the card in. That’s just how this works.

“It’s a weak WR class” takes

I get it. We don’t have the same top-level wide receiver prospects in this class as we did in the 2020 and 2021 drafts. My work echoes that evaluation.

However, we are going to get some good players out of this year’s group. They just are not going to be as obvious. Sounds more fun to me.

This year’s receiver class could look an awful lot like the 2019 NFL Draft. There were only two first-round picks that year: a good future starter in Marquise Brown and a flameout in N’Keal Harry. The meat of that class came on Day 2. Some of the best receivers in the game came out of the second and third rounds that year, such as DK Metcalf, A.J. Brown, Deebo Samuel, Terry McLaurin and Diontae Johnson.

Perhaps we don’t get that star-power in this draft, but it’s a good reminder that when talented players land in the right spot in Rounds 2 and 3, work on their craft and develop, they can dramatically outkick pre-draft rankings. Those are the type of fits I’ll be hunting down after the draft is over, rather than repeating the same tired “weaker class” talking point.

The Packers' pass-catching draft history

We all know the Packers have eschewed using Round 1 picks on pass-catchers for many years now. It has been a consistent draft weekend storyline just about every cycle.

With Aaron Rodgers out the door, it’s officially time to change course. Jordan Love is going to need all the support he can get in order to make the Packers' bet on turning the page work out.

I understand the Packers' recent approach at pass-catcher under Rodgers. He had the best receiver in football, Davante Adams, and the team rightly believed that an MVP-winning quarterback could elevate the rest of the cast. Even if they like Love, the Packers likely don’t and shouldn't have the same level of faith to expect him to do the same just yet.

Back in the day, Green Bay consistently loaded up the wide receiver room with high draft picks, and we could see them start flooding the room in a similar fashion in the early days of the Love era.

Green Bay jumping up to Pick 13 in the Rodgers deal seems like a clear indication they’d like to control the wide receiver board. The only teams in the top-12 who could take a receiver that high would be the Titans and Texans, but I think they both have bigger fish to fry. As such, Green Bay could have their pick of the group at 13th overall.

The Packers feel like a great landing spot for Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who should just clear their size thresholds. He’d be an easy separator for Love to rely on and would complement some of the volatility in Christian Watson’s game.

Michael Mayer nitpicks

Charles McDonald and I have discussed it on the podcast — we just don’t understand why Michael Mayer isn’t the clear consensus TE1 in this class and a top-20 lock.

Mayer projects to grow into a solid in-line blocker, even if he’s not perfect right now, and is a better receiver than he’s getting credited. He can be a vertical weapon in the seams, and he's a reliable short-area option in the flats and on quick hitches. There’s just so much to like about his game.

Teams in Round 1 including the Packers, Lions and Chargers shouldn’t let him slip to the late portions of Thursday. Tight end might be a slow-developing position, but he could be a functional bit player in Year 1. Again, he can improve, but he’s not a total project as a blocker or route runner. That alone can help him give contenders usable reps as a rookie.

The S2 test leaks

The S2 Cognition Test might well end up being a great predictor of NFL quarterback success. The Brock Purdy case is going to be a fascinating one to track. However, the amount of slander, takes and outright nonsense we’ve been subjected to thanks to some of the “leaked results” is nothing short of nauseating.

C.J. Stroud has had to deal with most of it. The fact that he has to defend himself in this way is silly, at best:

It’s especially ridiculous when you consider one of the co-founders of the S2 test confirmed that some of the results floating around the public were not accurate and/or were not being applied in the proper context. So maybe we need to take a beat on slamming quarterbacks for the results you see out there? Especially when they might not be the real outcomes.

The test might well be a great indicator; I’m not slamming the founders or users of it. But the sooner we can put this pre-draft cycle nonsense behind us, the better.