Quarterback: The most important position in football, and a position of strength across the SEC in 2022. Each week this summer, QB Class will go deep on a projected SEC starter — the good, the not-so-good, and what to expect in the upcoming season. Today: Alabama’s Bryce Young.

Typecasting: The Natural

It wasn’t that long ago that Alabama quarterbacks could still be counted on to fit the stereotype of the bland, homegrown “game manager” whose main job was keeping the defense out of trouble, a tradition spanning decades. These days, Young’s presence alone is a sign of just how distant that era now seems. A 5-star, 6-foot-nothing savant who inspired visions of Russell Wilson and Kyler Murray before he ever took a meaningful college snap, Young is the ideal of a modern spread quarterback and the poster boy for just how thoroughly that ideal has evolved in Tuscaloosa and at every level of the sport.

Until a few years ago, he would not have looked the part. The infrastructure of camps and gurus dedicated to honing raw teenage QBs into college-ready products wasn’t fully developed. The Alabamas and USCs of the world would have taken one look at an athletic high school QB on the wrong side of the height curve, converted him to wide receiver or defensive back, and relegated him to 2 years in the weight room before he could hope to see the field. Maybe they’d welcome him as a quarterback at, say, Georgia Tech or West Virginia, but only by operating in an offense that would leave him unprepared for a realistic shot at the NFL. Instead, by the time Young came along out of Pasadena, Calif., the pipeline had been built and the path cleared for a prospect with his specific skill set to ride the hype from the very beginning of the recruiting cycle all the way to the top of the draft.

He’s right on schedule entering Year 3. Under the circumstances, there was almost nothing Young could have done in his first year as a starter to exceed the hype, up to and including winning the Heisman. He merely was who he was supposed to be: Dynamic, efficient, and poised beyond his years, executing from Day 1 like a seasoned point guard with the complete trust of his coaches. He finished among the national leaders in passer rating and QBR, set school records for yards and touchdowns, and accounted for a higher share of Alabama’s total offense (66.5%) than Mac Jones, Tua Tagovailoa or Jalen Hurts in any of the previous 6 seasons.

The only box he didn’t check is the big one. Five different quarterbacks have led the Tide to a national championship in the Saban era – 6 if you count Tagovailoa’s dramatic turn off the bench in the 2017 title game – none of whom seemed as obviously destined to add their name to the list when they arrived on campus as Young. His bid for a second Heisman will be one of the season’s major subplots. But his bid for Rushmore status before he moves on will come down to closing the deal in January.

The good

The best adjective for Young’s game is smooth. As an athlete, he’s elusive in an efficient, seemingly effortless way that rarely shows up in highlights or box scores (he finished with exactly zero rushing yards on the season, subtracting for negative yardage on sacks) but is undeniable in his success extending plays under pressure. Mechanically, he manages to compensate for good-not-great arm strength with textbook footwork, anticipation and accuracy. Statistically, you could roll a strike on his output from one week to the next. Prior to the national championship loss to Georgia, he threw for multiple touchdowns in every game and multiple interceptions in none.

Young’s ability to survive and often thrive under pressure is worth emphasizing, partly because he spent so much time facing it — he was pressured on 36.2% of his dropbacks, according to Pro Football Focus, the second-highest rate among full-time SEC starters behind only Texas A&M’s Zach Calzada. If he was ever rattled, though, it almost never showed. On those plays, PFF credited Young for significantly more yards (1,320), first downs (67) and touchdowns (17) than any other FBS quarterback under duress, offset by just 3 INTs. As with any quarterback, turning up the heat was one of the keys to making him look mortal, which LSU (19 pressures, 3 sacks), Auburn (20 pressures, 7 sacks) and Georgia in the title game (27 pressures, 3 sacks) all managed to do in holding Bama to its lowest point totals of the season. But considering he was also hounded and hit in some of his best games, it was never a guarantee.

As the season wore on and his chemistry with Jameson Williams took the offense to another level, Young flashed some legitimate downfield juice that was notably lacking for most of September and October. Over the first 7 games, he was just 9-of-29 on attempts of 20+ yards, a steep decline in downfield success rate compared to Jones and Tagovailoa; over the last 7, he was 19-of-45, emerging along with Williams as the most feared big-play connection in the country.

In November alone Young and Williams racked up 551 yards and 7 touchdowns in 4 games, then proceeded to incinerate Georgia’s previously airtight secondary in the SEC Championship Game. Those weekly bombing raids down the stretch made a lasting mark. They were the catalysts for the Tide’s late surge into the Playoff, clinched the Heisman for Young, and made them both millions of dollars at the next level. Once the dynamic was established in the second half of the Tide’s midseason loss at Texas A&M, opposing defenses essentially failed to stop it.

Now, the big question in 2022: Can it be replaced?

The concerns

Williams and his All-SEC running mate, John Metchie III, combined for the majority of Alabama’s receiving output, and it hardly seemed like a coincidence that Young’s most forgettable outings came with one or both of them on ice.

In the quadruple-overtime thriller at Auburn, Williams was ejected in the first half for a targeting penalty on special teams; with his deep threat sidelined, Young dialed in hard on Metchie, targeting him on 22 of his 51 attempts, but failed to crack the end zone until the final, desperate minute of the game — Bama managed just 10 points in regulation before going on to escape with a 24-22 win in OT. A week later, Metchie tore his ACL late in the SEC Championship win over Georgia; without him, the Tide rode the ground game in their 27-6 semifinal win over Cincinnati, limiting Young to season lows for completions (17) and yards (181) and Williams to a season-low 8.9 yards per catch on nine targets. And after Williams’ knee exploded on a long reception in the second quarter of the national title game, the drop-off from the starters was all too apparent. Although Young finished with 369 yards, it took him 57 attempts to get there, and Alabama’s only touchdown of the night came on a short-field, 16-yard “drive” immediately following a turnover.

All of that was the prelude to the throw — from a clean pocket, with the season on the line — that’s haunted him ever since:

The postgame consensus rallied to Young’s defense, hanging blame for the loss on the hopelessly green bunch of wideouts he was left with following Williams’ injury. Nick Saban himself went there a few weeks later in a speech at a coaches’ clinic: “We had three guys,” Saban said, apparently referring to backups Ja’Corey Brooks, Agiye Hall, and Traeshon Holden, “they all had a significant role in the national championship game and not one of them — not one — could take advantage of the opportunity they had.” Coachspeak? For sure. (Saban’s broader point to the coaches in the audience was to preach to their own backups to prepare like starters.) But with Williams and Metchie both moving on, it was also an uncharacteristically blunt and bearish view on the guys in line to move into their roles.

The surrounding cast at the skill positions will be almost entirely new. Only 1 of last year’s top 6 receivers is back in the fold (TE Cameron Latu), and of the wideouts who played significantly in the postseason only Brooks appears safe to project as a starter. As for the rest, their status shifted to red alert with the addition of transfers Jermaine Burton (Georgia) and Tyler Harrell (Louisville) via the portal, another loud-and-clear message that the holdovers have not earned coaches’ trust. Hall read the writing on the wall and transferred to Texas; meanwhile, Holden and former blue-chips Jojo Earle and Christian Leary are treading water on the depth chart with another highly-rated WR class coming in right behind them.

The upshot for Young is that in lieu of a proven go-to target there are plenty of viable candidates. Brooks is (of course) a 5-star talent who came on late as a true freshman, hauling in the game-tying touchdown that sent the Iron Bowl to overtime, starting in place of Metchie in the playoff, and logging 10 catches for 113 yards in the last 2 games. Burton made the most of his limited opportunities at Georgia, averaging 17.0 yards per catch with 8 TDs over the past 2 years, and is banking on an expanded role in a more receiver-friendly system. And Harrell is just flat-out fast: After 3 quiet seasons at Louisville, he torched ACC secondaries in 2021 for 523 yards and 6 TDs on just 16 receptions — an absurd average of 29.1 yards per catch. The Jameson Williams comps write themselves.

Besides developing a rapport with a new group of receivers, the other unresolved issue this fall concerns Young’s legs: Is he going to use them more or what? For such an obviously dynamic athlete, Young was a nonentity in the designed run game, which overall was the least productive of the Saban era in terms of rushing yards per game and per carry. (PFF has Young down for 11 designed carries on the year, as opposed to scrambles, but that number includes fumbled snaps.) A rash of injuries behind starting RB Brian Robinson Jr. played a part in that, and presumably concerns about keeping Young in one piece did, too. The only games he came out substantially in the black as a runner were the wins over Tennessee (42 yards, 2 TDs) and Georgia (40 yards, 1 TD), all of that coming via scrambles.

The incentives to limit Young’s exposure to a potentially season-altering hit haven’t changed. Neither has the play-caller, Bill O’Brien, who has spent most of his career in the NFL and never worked with a quarterback prior to Young who could even remotely justify keeping the ball on a zone read. For his part, Young clearly wants to market himself to the next level as a pure pocket passer and avoid contributing to any possible confusion on that point. But would it hurt to force defenses to at least have to think about it?

The backup plan

Young took every meaningful snap in ’21, rendering the big flashing question mark behind him irrelevant. This year, the rest of the depth chart is more reassuring. Last year’s QB2, Jalen Milroe, got in some garbage-time work as a true freshman and had an impressive outing in the spring game. His competition for the understudy role is incoming freshman Ty Simpson, a 5-star prospect out of Tennessee who enrolled early to give Bama arguably the best quarterback room in the country.

Barring an injury to Young, the pecking order behind him will be relevant mainly as a preview of the competition to succeed him as the starter. The way these situations work now, the odds of Milroe and Simpson remaining on the roster for the ’23 opener are probably slim with the winner presumably entrenched for at least the next 2 years and the also-ran destined to portal out. In the meantime, the opportunity to audition in mop-up duty could quietly have career-altering implications.

The forecast

It’s close to impossible for a reigning Heisman winner to pull off a repeat, as it should be. The award functions as a kind of Hall-of-Fame induction, and college football is too sprawling and diverse a sport with too much turnover to anoint the same guy 2 years in a row. The list of back-to-back winners is exactly one name long, and it’s widely acknowledged that Archie Griffin’s second win in 1975 was a mistake.

If it were up to me, Young would still be seeking his first. While his production came in a rung below the standard set by other recent Heisman-winning quarterbacks, his teammate, edge Will Anderson Jr., set the single-season FBS record for tackles for loss since TFLs became an official stat and was generally the best player in America throughout the season. Anderson just missed the cut for a trip to the ceremony, egregiously, and it’s possible that recognition of the snub will work in his favor this time around. Beyond playing a more viable position, though, Young has another big advantage when it comes to the Bama vote: The benchmarks he set last year are actually attainable again on paper, where Anderson’s lofty numbers (if not his overall impact) are more likely to decline. Even skeptical voters who are inclined to avoid a repeat won’t be able to easily dismiss an incumbent whose numbers improve.

Inevitably, Young’s real competition will come from other high-profile quarterbacks in high-octane, championship-caliber offenses, namely Ohio State’s CJ Stroud (4th in 2021) and USC’s Caleb Williams. Like Young, Stroud and Williams are former blue-chip recruits who broke out last year in reliably passer-friendly systems; unlike Young, they also have proven targets at their disposal in Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Jordan Addison, respectively, both of whom put up obscene numbers as true sophomores. While we’re at it, let’s throw in Texas’ Quinn Ewers, the highest-rated QB prospect since Trevor Lawrence, who’s ready to begin his much-anticipated career in earnest after redshirting behind Stroud at OSU in what should have been his senior year of high school. If Texas is actually back in Year 2 under Steve Sarkisian – yes, a mighty big if, I know – Ewers is a contender. The ’21 race was mostly underwhelming in the absence of established stars or mind-blowing stats, to the extent that Young felt in some ways like a default pick as the face of the nation’s No. 1 team. That won’t be the case in ’22.

As always, a big part of the Heisman narrative will be whose team is still looking forward to playing for a ring in early December and whose isn’t. Alabama of course treats the national title game like a birthright. But Ohio State is clearly in championship-or-bust mode in Stroud and Smith-Njigba’s final season after missing the cut last year, and USC, where Lincoln Riley has made quick work of overhauling an underachieving roster via the transfer portal, is a compelling darkhorse with a very manageable schedule. The trophy is hardly Young’s to lose. More likely, it will take an historic effort above and beyond the one that won it last time, for a team that cruises back into the layoff.