Panthers' choice should be Stroud and clear

Carolina deals with Chicago to get the first overall pick in the NFL draft

C.J. Stroud

The Carolina Panthers will be accused of mortgaging their future on Friday. In truth, they bought a chance to sell off their past.

When you need a quarterback like C.J. Stroud and you know you need a first-overall pick in the 2023 draft to get one, the price of doing business is both enormous and irrelevant. To capture that opportunity, the Panthers gave Chicago the No. 9 pick in this draft, plus a second-rounder, plus their first-round pick in 2024, plus receiver D.J. Moore.

The Bears gladly accepted this haul because they’re happy with Justin Fields, the quarterback they took two years ago. They were always going to raffle off the first pick to take advantage of a spring outbreak of QB Fever, an annual phenomenon.

The Panthers tried to make it work last year with Baker Mayfield, P.J. Walker and Sam Darnold, and they had their fifth consecutive losing season. Winning with a deluxe quarterback is not guaranteed. Winning without one, in the roaring 20s, is impossible. Carolina is 29-53 since its last previous playoff appearance. Stroud, of all the available college quarterbacks, is the quickest fix.

He is 6-foot-3, outspoken, convinced of his own inevitability, and the most polished quarterback in the draft. In two years at Ohio State he threw 85 touchdowns with 12 interceptions, and he won a Rose Bowl and came within a botched field goal of ousting Georgia in the College Football Playoff semifinal. He performed at the Draft Combine last week and threw casual, pinpocket rockets, the way he did at Rancho Cucmonga (Ca.) High when he was badly under-recuited, the way he did at the off-season camps that got him the appropriate notice, the way he did from his first day of eligiblility in Columbus. Even the best scouts have been fooled by quarterbacks, and it’s true that Stroud was surrounded by master-class talent in college. But you can’t fake arm strength and accuracy. You can’t teach it either.

Frank Reich is the new Panthers’ coach. Josh McCown is the quarterback coach. Both were longtime NFL QBs, but not even Reich could help Matt Ryan reel back the years in Indianapolis this past season. There was a feeling that Carolina, recognizing that the college QBs would be gone by the time it picked ninth, would invest in Derek Carr, whom the Raiders had released. Instead Carr signed with New Orleans, where his salary cap hit will be $35 million in 2024 and $45 million in 2025. By trading up to get Stroud, the Panthers will have a quarterback on a rookie contract, which means they can bulk up the rest of their roster, as Philadelphia did on a grander scale last year because it still had Jalen Hurts on the cheap.

Evaluators are paid to expose doubts. There was only one that stuck to Stroud. He had not shown much taste for running away from trouble. As it turned out, that was because he rarely ran into trouble at Ohio State. His line was too good and his opposition wasn’t good enough. But when Georgia’s wild dogs came after him in the playoff, Stroud did run for first downs, and his downfield dashes put the Buckeyes in position for the field goal that flopped. If the Panthers’ professional runners are as successful as they were in the second half of last season, Stroud will be able to run for first downs, not his life.

The Panthers have not publicly targeted Stroud. There will be pressure to take Bryce Young of Alabama, who has a national championship and a Heisman Trophy, and an eerie way of finding ports in a storm. But a 17-game schedule might be a super-soaker for Young, who is 5-foot-10 and bulked up to 200 pounds for the combine. Young noted that Russell Wilson is also vertically-challenged, but Wilson is sturdier, and, after all, Wilson went in the third round, the 75th pick, precisely because of his size.

Everyone looked malnourished next to Florida’s Anthony Richardson, who turned the combine into his own runway. He showed up at 6-foot-4 and 244, blitzed the 40 yard dash in 4.43 seconds, broad-jumped 10 feet, nine inches from a standing position, and turned in a 40.5 inch vertical jump, not that he’ll be called upon to dunk very often. But his numbers and appearance made him look like an edge rusher, not a QB, and the scouts needed Big Gulp cups to contain their droool. Ex-scout and current podcaster Daniel Jeremiah said that one NFL general manager said he wouldn’t be surprised if Richardson had strutted into the first overall position.

But the team that drafts Richardson probably can’t afford to play him immediately. He played only one full SEC season and 22 games overall. Last season his completion rate was 53 percent. Stroud’s was 66.3, Young’s was 64.3. Arm strength isn’t the problem, and neither is turning bad plays into 60-yard touchdown runs. But Patrick Mahomes isn’t who he is because he has a corner on the spectacular. His showy passes are just an extension of his pristine fundamentalism. Richardson will need help on that. Provided Stroud and Young are gone, Indianapolis will have a stomach-knotting choice with the fourth pick: Richardson or Kentucky’s Will Levis, another specimen who played hurt last season and contracted turnover-itis as a result. (Arizona, having committed to Kyler Murray, picks third and doesn’t need a quarterback.)

Again, quarterback roulette is the best story of any draft. In 2016 Jared Goff and Carson Wentz were the first two picks. Despite Goff’s Super Bowl with the Rams, the best QB was Dak Prescott, Dallas’ fourth-round pick. Brock Purdy was the very last pick a year ago and steered San Francisco into the playoffs.

This shouldn’t stop the talent departments, especially Carolina’s, from making decisions based on the empirical. We might not look back in 20 years and say C.J. Stroud was the best choice. But when the Panthers look ahead to April 27, they’ll have the first one, and the easiest.