Bryce Young has had a storied high school and college career, one that could convince you he was built in a lab — if not for “the one thing” about his scouting profile. And it won’t leave him, not until he succeeds in the NFL.
At the NFL Combine, it took all of 27 seconds for Young to be asked about that one thing — his size. He measured in at 5’10 1/8” and 204 pounds. Though at that weight, he didn’t perform any workouts or drills. At his pro day, where he did perform position drills, Young declined to weigh in.
Young almost certainly didn’t play at 204 pounds, and he didn’t work out at that weight either, telling us his playing weight is much lower — likely in the 180-pound range that many draft analysts have speculated. But that fact has overwhelmed the Young story.
It has become the first and last thing analysts say about him, when the far more interesting story is that he’s been building for this moment, every day since he was six years old.
Bryce Young Has Been Training for This His Whole Life
That might be why the for-now aptly-named Young has put himself in a position to become the first overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. It’s fitting that the last quarterback with such extreme size concerns to go first overall, Kyler Murray, was drafted by Kliff Kingsbury, the very first coach to offer Young a scholarship when he was in eighth grade.
That didn’t happen by accident. Virtually since the moment Young could pick up a football he was throwing the ball and finding ways to play or train at quarterback. Danny Hernandez, who spoke to Pro Football Network, should know. He trained Young since he was in sixth grade.
“Nowadays, I’ve got a lot of kids in junior high getting Division I offers,” said Hernandez. “But Bryce was the first one that I had when he was in eighth grade. We ended up doing a workout video on him. I thought it was a really good video, and we sent it out to a bunch of college coaches.
“Kliff Kingsbury ended up being the first one to pull the trigger on him,” he said. “I remember talking to Kliff saying, ‘Hey, I know this guy is only 5’9″, he’s in the eighth grade, I know it seems kind of ridiculous to push this kid on you this early to get a Division I offer, but I think he’s that good.’”
That early push was prescient. Despite his size, Young was one of the most coveted prospects in the country by the time he was a high school junior. As he fielded offers from powerhouses like Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Georgia, Young eventually committed to USC. But it was another name familiar to fans of USC that eventually changed his commitment from USC to Alabama, offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian.
Young earned that consideration after his intense training regimen, first training twice a week with Hernandez, graduating to training sessions every single day from seventh grade through high school at Cathedral High School in Los Angeles, where Hernandez was a coach.
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The early commitment for Young brought attention to both him and Hernandez, who turned into a sought-after developer of talent and an expert networker among college coaches. Soon after Young’s eighth-grade offer from Texas Tech, Hernandez secured offers for eighth-grade QBs in three consecutive years.
Hernandez’s biggest recruiting coup might not have been for an eighth grader, however. He was able to generate buzz for a junior quarterback he’d been working with in J.T. Shrout, who had, prior to the offer, only thrown 30 passes in regulation high school play.
Now, Hernandez has a roster of quarterbacks regularly earning four- and five-star consideration from recruiting services, including the 2024 class’ consensus fourth-ranked quarterback Julian Sayin, who just committed to Alabama, following in the footsteps of Young.
Bryce Young Has the Temperament To Succeed
That Alabama connection is no mistake, and this time it’s not because of marketing magic. Young has a similar temperament to previous Alabama quarterbacks Jalen Hurts, Tua Tagovailoa, and Mac Jones.
“I think [the key is] always staying grounded,” said Hernandez of that attitude. “And I think one of the things Bryce has done a good job of, and a big part of that was because of his dad, just never really getting caught up in being upset.”
Hernandez summarized the attitude by saying, “The highs can’t be too high, the lows can’t be too low.
“The media is going to talk about his size or all these different negative things that they might try to put on him. And he just says, ‘Hey, I can only control what I can control,’” he said. “And then when things are going great, and people are talking about how great he is, just not getting too caught up in that, either. It’s knowing, hey, I gotta get back to work and start doing what I’m doing.”
That attitude, along with player empowerment and buy-in, might be what separates a quarterback like Young from the specter of Todd Marinovich, the “Robo QB” who was trained by his father at an early age to become a quarterback before fizzling out.
Whereas Marinovich’s life was controlled from beginning to end, Hernandez sees it as his duty finding ways for players to discover themselves and empowering the “best version” that they can be.
“I’ll talk to kids as young as 6-7 years old, and I’ll make sure I’m talking to the parents asking them things like, ‘Hey, do you let him order his own food?,’ something as basic as that,” he said. “I think it’s a way to teach them to become comfortable with their own voice and being a confident person.”
That confidence and ability to find his voice is a big reason why Young has been handed the reins of every offense he’s worked in. After transferring to quarterback powerhouse Mater Dei — a school that produced Matt Leinart, Matt Barkley, Colt Brennan, and, notably, Marinovich — Young quickly earned the starting job.
Young was operating under the shadow of one of the greatest high school seasons of all time, asked to follow up a 2017 squad quarterbacked by five-star recruit JT Daniels that not only finished the season undefeated after traveling the country to play the best teams, but a season where the Monarchs never played from behind.
“I still remember when he transferred to Mater Dei,” Hernandez said. “A lot of people said, ‘Oh well, now he’s going to be playing the best in the country.’ I want to say they opened up pretty early against Bishop Gorman, one of the top teams in Vegas, and right out the gate, he was doing the exact same things that he was doing at the Division II level that he was at, at Cathedral High School. Just never in doubt, that’s just who he is.”
Bryce Young Exceeded His Highest Expectations
It didn’t take long for Young to earn that consideration. Mater Dei head coach Bruce Rollinson told USA Today that he’d never had a quarterback like Young. That’s a lofty statement from a 26-year head coach of the most storied QB high school in the country.
“There are times that I think he has eyes on the side of his head. His peripheral vision, his sense, his smell, his awareness is just uncanny,” he said.
Rollinson gave Young the keys to the car, and Young was calling his own plays, often acting like an offensive coordinator with his setup and payoff-type play-calling. He secured a victory against Florida’s IMG Academy in his first year at Mater Dei by calling a zone read on the final offensive play after seeing how the defense continued to take the running back on his zone-read plays.
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As Young told USA Today, “We’ll have some plays where I’m calling, and there’s some plays where I have the freedom to get out of plays. For me, I like to make sure that I know where everyone’s at.”
He added, “And then there’s a lot that comes from film study to where you can predict where certain people are going to go, what rotation you might get, what blitz you might get.”
Being able to see the play has been a big part of Young’s success. Being confident enough to call those plays is something else, and it’s his ability to communicate that has given him unprecedented freedom within his offenses — at Cathedral, Mater Dei, and even Alabama, where Young was given more responsibility at the line of scrimmage than nearly any other quarterback to go through Saban’s program.
Bryce Young the Communicator
That’s why Hernandez preaches empowerment. “What we’re trying to do is making them be the best versions of themselves. They have to be very, very good communicators,” he said. “They know their job on everything that they’re doing and also know everything else on their team’s job.”
“You have to talk about the communication piece,” Hernandez said. “You might have a receiver that when he drops the ball, completely gets down on himself. You gotta know how to get that guy back. Sometimes it might be as simple as slapping them on the butt and saying, ‘Hey, let’s get it together here.’
“Or you might have an inside joke or some space that you might give them. A lot of those nonverbal cues. We’re constantly about how you build that with your teammates because they will see you out there. You have to have a voice.”
Saban described Young as a point guard, an evaluation that Hernandez offered unprompted as well, especially given Young’s history playing basketball throughout middle school and high school at that position.
“I know it sounds very cliché that we talk about how the quarterback is a point guard. Well, he’s playing point guard out there,” said Hernandez. “Just take a look at the moves that he’s doing. He’s out there with the hesi, he’s out there with the crossover, he’s out there with the stepback. He’s learned every point guard move that you would make in basketball and putting it out there on the football field.”
For Hernandez, that has been the key. Young knows who he is. He’s a basketball player playing football. Quarterback coaching is, in many ways, trying to find a player’s “superpower,” according to Hernandez.
“I might have a kid that is 6’5″ that has a cannon as an arm, that might be his superpower” he said. “They’re going to figure out how to use that to the best of their ability.”
Young’s superpower? It’s… everything. Except that one thing. “I mean Bryce literally checks every single box as a quarterback… other than the height category,” he said. “He’s the best … amazing instincts, great spatial awareness, able to change different arm slots, able to change speed, you know I constantly talk about how he’s playing basketball out there.”
Young Has Succeeded at Every Level
Young’s height didn’t stop him from earning awards. He walked away from his high school career as the Los Angeles Times Player of the Year for the state of California, California’s Gatorade Football Player of the Year, and USA Today’s Offensive Player of the Year.
“I think the thing was, even when he was having the success he was having, he’s always been questioned, it’s always been ‘yea he’s good, but he’s doing it at that level,’ or ‘he’s doing it against those guys,’ you know, ‘can he do it at the next level,’ even after doing really well at Cathedral,” said Hernandez.
And then Young does it. From playing with the varsity as a high school freshman at Cathedral to transferring up a division to start for the top team in the country to playing at Alabama and starting there, he’s succeeded despite his height. And what’s more, teams like Mater Dei, Alabama, and eventually Carolina or Houston, do not evaluate quarterbacks based on how well they did — they evaluate them based on traits.
Aside from that one thing, Young has all the traits. It speaks volumes that teams that have always invested in 6’4”-type quarterbacks see Young as the best prospect there is.
That doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed to succeed. Every first-overall pick has had a similar journey. They move up a level and succeed, with questions about whether they’ll be able to do it again when the competition gets tougher. Many of them make it through dozens of hoops without a scratch before failing in the NFL.
We’ll see if he can overcome the odds once more. But it would be surprising if that one thing is what holds him back.