The Ringer NFL Show - Bryce Young Might Be in Serious Trouble | The Play Sheet [VIDEO]

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

The Ringer’s Ben Solak talks through first overall pick Bryce Young's rookie season so far. His tape can be rough to watch, but with new coaches, a shaky O-line, and a WR corps devoid of star power, it'd be reasonable to place the blame for his lackluster performance elsewhere. The Carolina Panthers have put their faith in Bryce, but his future might depend on his ability to evolve his reads, timing, and ball placement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howdy, I'm Ben Solac. This is our week four episode of the play sheet. So a weekly podcast I do. It's in your feeds every single Wednesday. It's a video pod. We're going to break down some film. So on the Spotify app, click into the pod episode. You can watch the video. It's going to be great. The opening script. What's going on with Bryce Young? If you're a Panthers fan right now, you don't feel great. In April, you felt great. You had the first overall pick. And it was going to be Bryce Young babies, an Alabama quarterback, record setter,

Heisman winner, face of the franchise. Of course, you did have to trade a future. your first round pick and DJ more to go get him. He was costly, but that was going to be okay. And you were going to draft him over C.J. Stroud and Anthony Richardson, but that was fine. He was the guy. Well, through the first month of the season, C.J. Stroud looks amazing. Anthony Richardson looks amazing. And Bryce Young, not so much. Bryce is third worst in the league right now by expected points added per drawback. He's only above Kenny Pickett and Dorian Thompson Robinson. By success rate, sixth worst, and by explosive

play rate, third worst. This Panthers offense is basically like the offense the Bengals are dealing with right now. Only Joe Burrow has like a massive calf injury to explain why that offense looks that way. The Panthers and Bryce Young don't have that. What the Panthers do have is a really crummy offensive environment for Young. Their primary receiver is Adam Thieland, who's over 30 and was never more than a wide receiver two with the Vikings. The rest of the room is DJ Chark, Leviska-Chanolt, Terrence Marshall, Jonathan Mingo. Their tight end is Hayden Hearst. They don't really have a cadre of pass catchers you'd like to build a young quarterback around. At offensive line, same issues. Austin Corbett.

has missed the entire season on the Publis. Brady Christensen has missed three of the last four games. Both of their replacements have been liabilities. And with Ikea Kuanu, second year first round pick, left tackle, not playing super great, the Panthers have more liabilities on the offensive line than they have plus players. So those are your mitigating factors with Bryce. And remember, rookie quarterbacks tend to just be bad to start anyway, like Stroudan Richardson are doing great, but Bryce Young's arc is the more common one.

Altogether, there's no reason to panic. But we should still be able to watch Young's film, even in this bad environment. divorce his play from the circumstances and talk about what he's doing at the NFL level. And to do that, we go to play action. Earlier this year on the play sheet, we did scouting reports on all the 2023 quarterbacks. We started with Bryce Young, and the first thing that we highlighted was the timing in his dropbacks and how his height affected his dropback and how his dropback affected how quickly he got the ball out and why some of his throws over the middle of the field would be late accordingly.

Here's what we said. This is Young this season against Arkansas. He's going to end up throwing this like 12-yard in-breaking route, which Routes that break inside at like 10 to 15 yards are really important to this Alabama offense. We're going to see a lot of them. Now, I want to start with Young's drop back. We'll go from the end zone view to see this. First thing we're going to seize the punch step, right?

Boom. There it is. That left foot comes back. Watch how long his hips stay parallel to the line of scrimmage, right? They're just going to be parallel, parallel, parallel. And then he's finally going to flip to perpendicular now, right? Perpendicular line of scrimmage now that he's ready to throw. As we said, this drop back can screw with your timing.

This throw should be a third. three-step drop and out, right? You might be able to three-step and hitch, right? You hit that back foot, and then you take that little hop step forward. But in reality, this should be three-step, land on the back foot, drive this sucker. Because what you're worried about, and this is what we see is the play runs, you're worried about this linebacker right here, right? He's got vision right now on this receiver, but if this receiver doesn't pull him, he's going to be sitting right here in this window we want to throw the ball to. So we have a small area, man. We do not have a big space to deliver this football.

So it's got to be out on time. But because Young takes that extra step in his drop back, the ball's out a little late. Watch the whole play now. Seeing how Young's extra step in the pocket means that he's just a little bit late, right? He's just landing in his throwing stance now. This ball comes out a little bit late.

It has to be behind the receiver. Look at the placement. It's going to come to his back shoulder. And then the receiver's worried about the hit. And he's going to drop it. And it's a drop. It's a pass breakup. That play brings.

us directly to this play, which is week one for Bryce Young against the Atlanta Falcons. He's going to throw an in-breaker, middle of the field, and it's going to be a little late and picked off by Jesse Bates. Now, you don't have to play Jesse Bates every single week, which is good news because Jesse Bates is a very good safety. But watching the dropback and the timing for Bryce Youngs is what we care about here. Ball's going to get snapped. There's that punch step, right?

That drop step. And he's going to land and kind of bounce on his drop. Right here, right here he looks like he's in a throwing position. Maybe you're threatening throwing this route. But then he's going to hop backwards. Set his feet this way, maybe looking at this route, but Jesse Bates is there. So then okay, now he's going to bounce again and throw this ball to Haydenhurst. It's not super late.

It really isn't. Like, it's close. But this is why we highlighted those plays last year and said, these are small margins. These are small errors, but they're really going to matter. They're going to be magnified at the NFL level. You'd like to see a taller, bigger quarterback, land on the top of the drop right here. and then just stay, right? Like, you've got, you've got pressure coming into your lap,

but if you're 6, 3, 2, 15, if you're a bigger guy, you can just hold this position right here. You don't have to bounce backwards. And on that bounce backwards, you end up setting your feet to the outside a little bit. And now when you throw this, your hips are kind of open, so you don't get a ton of velocity into this throw.

And accordingly, Jesse Bates is time to get underneath it. Like, ideally, if we're just watching Hayden Hurst right now, the ball should be hitting him right now. Ball should be hitting him right now. Like that's the window. But the ball's half a thick behind. It doesn't feel like a lot, but it's a lot.

And it ends up being interception. Now the good news is that this is not like a Zach Wilson situation where he just can't see it at all. He's like he totally doesn't get the timing of it. He does. It's just his process in the pocket makes him a little late. And so I like what you've got from Frank Reich and Thomas Brown, the offensive coaching staff here in Carolina.

We're acknowledging that. They're now giving him kind of more, untraditional dropbacks in general to take advantage of his fast feet, take advantage of his springiness, and not ask him to do that just like traditional dropback stuff. In this case, it's going to be a play action pass. They're going to throw this inbreaker right here to Adam Thielen. The window is bigger, but I don't really care about like the window and where the safety is. I care about what the offensive coaching staff is asking him to do here. Well, play action fake, it's cool little design, right? They got that that tight end there in the formation. And then Bryce just immediately flips his feet, right? So you have this

little play action fake. You're looking at this linebacker right here, since he's a lot of He brought his back to this route. You know you're throwing this every day of the week. So watch how quickly Young flips his feet. And now you're just ready to throw it, right? He's up on his toes. There's no like we're bouncing backwards. And then we have to redrop our weight into our back hip so we can fire this thing.

It's just like one step play action, RPO-ish kind of footwork. Just all right, we can throw this right now. Just put on Thielen's numbers. So this is the coaching staff making a better ask of young saying, okay, if drop back wise, you're always going to be kind of a tick behind on these throws because of how you have to drop back. then we're going to change the backfield action to make this throw easier for you, to make the timing of it easier for you. Another thing we really harped on in that Bryce Young video was the creativity.

It was the out of structure stuff. He was so good with his feet off the ground and with pressure and moving one direction, finding zippy little throwing lanes. He had that point guard play style that was so cool to see. Watch the movie. He breaks his ankles, okay? And so then he breaks his ankles with his eyes up the whole time. All right, you look fake going to the outside, and then he steps up into the pocket.

He's going to find this slant window with pressure coming in on him. He's going to step up into a broken pocket and still find a throwing platform. Incomplete, but watch from the end zone view. Okay, hesitation, oh, screw you. Then hop up and reset your feet, right? Ready to throw, breaking into the window. And look with this ball arrives. As his momentum is coming forward, as his back is getting knocked into his legs,

catch a football! It's such a good play, and Young doesn't get paid off for it. In the NFL, it's been harder for Young to find those plays, but there have been flashes. This against the Vikings being one of them. Third and 11, huge pressure look from the Vikings here, right?

And it makes sense, right? You're kind of at the edge of fuel goal range here. You pick this up, we're going to be able to score. You don't pick this up. We're going to have to punt the football. So it's an enormous play right now. It's man coverage, cover zero across the board, so it seems.

Snap the football. Everybody comes, and then a couple players end up dropping, right, try to fill in this window here. So if you're Bryce, you want to throw potentially this curl route right here. You have these droppers. You probably still can, but there's mudded on the pocket. Harrison Smith's already in.

So you know what? Bryce has already dropped his eyes. He's deciding to run. Again, I think like taller, bigger quarterback might hang in and throw this route, but Bryce doesn't. That's not the way he plays. So he gets outside of the pocket. When you're here, every other quarterback in the world is, I think, thinking this. Like they just get to the outside, right?

Or even just like stay behind the line of scrim. try to throw something that runs in this direction. Not Bryce. This is weird and cool. He's going to stop his momentum and then find that throw that he didn't find from the pocket. And like doing it running into his offensive linemen. And that's such a sick play relative to the LSU one where he's doing the same thing where like he's stepping into the line of scrimmage and suddenly stopping his momentum and finding

a throw. It's a very creative platform. Not a lot of guys find that throw. End zone view is cool. All right. So we're looking at that route. We land on our back foot. We just, we feel too much pressure, which I don't think, I think you can stay in this pocket, hitch up and throw this. But whatever, Bryce Young's creative guy. So we climb and he still knows he's here. He's still thinking about him. And so he just stops, finds a throw and first down. That's a tough play. But what do we say about the NFL? Marlins get smaller. It's harder to get away with the same stuff, especially when you're not like an Anthony Richardson caliber athlete. You're just a Bryce Young caliber athlete. athlete. So okay, we had a three, it's third and three man rush, right? And so young lands on his back foot in the pocket and there's just so many coverage bodies here to the three receiver's side. Like the, the saints have just filled the quick game windows and appropriately so. That's what they

expected to get good call by Dennis Allen. So Young drops the eyes, drops the hips, right? Okay. Beat that pressure. And now we're in a great spot, right? We have all this room to work with. We have receivers we can run scramble drill stuff. What's Young going to do? He pushes to that line of scrimmage. He starts to pull linebacker down and he does what we just saw him do right where instead of like trying to break the tackle or run to the sideline he's going to stop his momentum and attempt to throw he wants this he forgot about that and so when he throws this it's a it's a pass break up and it very well could have been an interception now good job by the receiver playing through the catch point but this is an example of what it becomes a little bit harder to get away with the same stuff right Bryce is still showing

the same traits playing the same way margins get a lot smaller in the NFL I think right now, if you're just highlighting thing Bryce Young could do at the college level that he can't do with the NFL and he's got to adjust to it, it's the way that he runs away from rushers. We're in scoring range here against the Saints, end of the first half. You see this rusher, right? Like when you drop back, you're looking, you're thinking about throwing the Leviska-Schnault screen, actually it's a ghost screen, whatever.

But you see this free rusher coming off the edge. You know he's outside and behind you. So when you go to scramble, you have to know there's heat, right here. And it's faster and bigger and stronger than it was even in the SEC. And Young just forgets that. He just doesn't play with the appropriate tempo. Zach, Bumble, turnover. End zone view. Look for the front side. I can't throw that. You have to know that Granderson won that rep. And you have to get away from him faster. Second and 17, inside the 30s, you're not in scoring range yet. They got seven on the line. You got five plus one. You have to know if everybody comes. You're hot, right? There's an

additional rusher. He is your responsibility. All right. Backsteps inside. If that outside guy's coming, he's coming for you. The tackle is not taking him. You got to get rid of this ball. So first, you got to throw it. And then secondly, if you realize, okay, I'm not going to throw this, now you need the athleticism to beat Harrison Smith in space. And just he was, he's a quick athlete, but he's not big, he's not strong, he's not that explosive. And that's he get plays like these. The pressure stuff is concerning ball security and like knowing what you can and can't get away with, what you can do on a scramble drill. But that's part of like learning the game.

It's part of getting to NFL speed, learning about NFL bodies. I think Young can get through that. What you can't get through are arm strength concerns. And right now Young just doesn't access as much of the field as you'd like for him to. On throws, 20 plus air yards down the field. Bryce Young right now is one for eight. It's one of the worst quarterback performances in league. Now that's like the deep bomb stuff, the downfield stuff.

If we go 10 air yards down the field but outside of the numbers, These are the far sideline throws. Young is still one of the worst quarterbacks in the league. He's three for 10. Of course, offensive line playing, wide receiver player are a big part of this. You need protection for those downfield routes to get down there, and then you need receivers to win.

The problem is, Andy Dolan played one game as the starter for the Panthers. And in that one game, he was four for eight on throws 10 plus air yards down the field outside of the numbers. And 20 plus air yards down the field, he was four for seven. So if he can't fully explain this away by the sporting cast, Dolan made it work. 30 and six here against the Saints. They're going to have the point manager,

trying to clear out route. They want Thielen to be able to run this outbreaking route. And it's great coverage by the corner. But hey, margins in the NFL are smaller. We talk about this. So Thelan's getting gloved up. It's part of the reason why you haven't Thielen as your primary wide receiver is kind of bad. But at the time of the break, you've pulled this outside player away. So you have this room to drop the football in. This ball needs to come upfield and outside, right? Because the corner is inside underneath, right? You have to be able to throw opposite his leverage. Again, it's great coverage, but welcome to

the NFL. These are the problems. So, okay, Young lands at the top of his drop back, throws this thing, and it's flat and it's inside, right? And so you are not delivering the ball on this far throw where it needs to be delivered. End zone view. The location of the ball is what's going to make this route work. It can't be here. You have to be able to put this ball out here. And I know Young has the arm strength for it, but he doesn't succeed on these faraway throws. Watch the drop. I'm going to be able to put this ball out here. And I know Young has the arm strength for it. And I know Young has the arm strength for it. But he doesn't succeed. are on our toes, on our toes, on our toes, and we never get our heels dug into the ground. So as he goes to release this, it's always trying to pop the whole thing with his hips right there,

but he doesn't put his heels in the ground. So he doesn't get as much power as he should. And that's why you kind of get this, this like pop up where he's like, boop. Like see how has his hips come up as he's trying to like lace this thing over the top, but it just doesn't come out with enough speed. And accordingly, it dies in the air and could have been a pick. But fundamentally, the reason why I won't panic on Bryce Young just yet. Think some of the problems are the problems that we could anticipate and think his limited player, but the reason why I won't panic is because they just can't catch the football. Similar drop back, kind of bouncing on his toes. This time you got Cam Jordan bearing down. It's a similar style throw, but just catch it, brother. Just catch the ball. Get

Bryce Young better receivers and he's going to look better. I promise. So the mission right now with Bryce Young is about patience, right? You're going to have to wait and have this guy figure out week over week what he can and can't get away with at the NFL level. You're going to have to wait for the offensive supporting cast to get better and that doesn't happen overnight. Oh, and you have Frank Reich in his first year with the Panthers working with Thomas Brown the OC for the first time and Josh McCown was the first year head coach. So like everybody's learning. It's okay to just take a deep breath. The problem with patience is that Bryce Young's back there getting hit. He's not that big and he can't escape pressure super well and that accumulates on a guy. It

builds up. It changes his internal clock. It changes his confidence level. You don't want to have him out there in a bad environment such that it burns him and it teaches him some bad habits. We call this David Carring, a guy, by the way. So right now, no panic button. Does it feel great with how CJ Stroud and Anthony Richardson are playing? No. Does it feel great when the Panthers might have traded the first overall pick in a draft that has Caleb Williams to draft Bryce Young? No, but there's no, there's no panic button yet.

That'll do it for us here on the play sheet. It's not the usual outro just yet. There's no the videos on the screen and all that. And that's because I love doing the play sheet so much is the bomb. And if you've watched it every single episode since last season or is your first episode, that's great. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I've been on screen for every single episode.

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