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Bryce Young reacts after being selected by Carolina Panthers with first pick of NFL 2023 draft
In an interaction with the media, Young expressed tremendous joy on being picked by Panthers and called it a surreal moment of his career.
For most, being picked in the NFL draft is an almost impossible dream. Out of roughly a million high school footballers in the USA, only around 70,000 play for the NCAA in college. And only 1.6% of college-level footballers make it to the NFL which is roughly a chance of And only 853 will be picked in the NFL out of those million high school footballers.
So imagine the joy of being numero uno. On Thursday night, it was Bryce Young who had the honour of being the first pick of the NFL draft. In an interaction with the media, Young expressed tremendous joy on being picked by Panthers and called it a surreal moment of his career.
“It’s surreal. It’s a dream come true. As amazing of a moment this is, I’m going to try to live in this moment. I can’t wait to get to work and start building off of it,” said Young.
Panthers owner David Tepper was overjoyed having got Young. "Super Bowls," Tepper said while addressing the sea of fans at Bank of America Stadium. Later, at a news conference, Tepper provided insight into the planning that went behind the scenes to acquire Young. He also lauded the quarterback for his abilities.
"When we went through the process with these quarterbacks, we asked ourselves, 'Which one of these guys will be a guy that can take us?'. Not to talk about all the different guys, but we thought this guy had the highest probability of winning Super Bowls," said Tepper as quoted by ESPN.
"Listen, you want to win Super Bowls. And you know there's no sure thing here. But it's a probability. We thought this guy has the best probability of winning Super Bowls," he added.
Meanwhile, there were debates over Young's height (5-10 1/8, 204 pounds) which is lower than the average height (6-2 ½) for NFL quarterbacks.
"Those that doubt me, they are entitled to their opinion. That is the beauty of sports. We all come together and have arguments on who you think is good or not. I choose to focus on what I can control, put my energy into that and whatever external factors it may be, positive or negative, that is stuff I can't control," said Young.
Young had delivered a superb performance while at Alabama. In three seasons at Alabama, the quarterback completed over 65 percent of his passes, threw 80 touchdowns to only 12 interceptions and had a 165.0 passer rating.
