2022 NFL Mock Draft: Bryce Young needs to opt out of 2022 college season, force NFL's hands
Dominant rookies, surprising 2022 Mock Draft first round picks, and why the NFL's three-year rule is outdated for some draft prospects
I may not be the college football fan that many others are, but I doubt I’ll get many dissenting opinions if I say that Bryce Young’s performance against Georgia on Saturday is one of the best individual games for an NFL Draft prospect in the history of NFL Draft prospects.
The only problem for Young being that he’s not going to be an NFL Draft prospect until 2023.
I watched Tua Tagovailoa play for Alabama and I wasn’t impressed enough to believe that he should be a first round pick.
I watched Mac Jones play for Alabama and while I thought he was underrated enough to be worthy of San Francisco’s pick at three, he wasn’t so unique that I thought he should be a lock for that mantle.
I watched Bryce Young play for Alabama against Georgia on Saturday and I can confidently say that if he were eligible to be drafted next year, the Lions and Texans would be going to even greater lengths to assure themselves of the number one pick in 2022.
Young is good enough for us to once again challenge the very notion of the “three-year rule” and to give him the exception that wasn’t afforded to Maurice Clarett once upon a time. The world has changed since then, but football may be even more dramatically different today than it was in the aughts.
Facing a Georgia defense that 538 called potentially the “best ever”, Bryce Young proceeded to read key mistakes by the Bulldogs and then punished them for it: 26 of 44 for 421 yards and three touchdowns, plus a rushing score.
He called his own shots, he found every open Alabama player, he was neither selfish nor afraid.
Bryce Young’s status as a prospect can only boil down to one word: Elite.
So why is he being forced to play another season of college football when he has nothing left to prove? Why should the NFL be holding back a player who would be the top prospect in a 2022 draft class that features zero first round locks at the quarterback position? How could the game of football possibly get better by Young taking unnecessary risks for Alabama next season instead of for Detroit?
I recently become familiar with Dr. Todd Grande, a YouTuber who examines famous criminal cases from a psychological point of view and I think there’s something to be learned here from his video on the tragic shooting death of a cinematographer on the set of the movie Rust. The actor Alec Baldwin was holding the gun that fired and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and in an attempt to clarify his side of the story, Baldwin did an interview with ABC News.
The most important takeaway from that interview may be something noted here by Dr. Grande: “Why do the interview?”
Dr. Grande notes that with potential criminal and civil cases to follow, Alec Baldwin stands nothing to gain and everything to lose from making public statements about what happened on the set of Rust. I can’t imagine that there would be a credible lawyer who would give anyone in Baldwin’s situation the advice to do a television interview at this time…just stay quiet until the legal side is sorted out completely.
Scratching the itch to “do more” when you literally can’t do more is an action that can only have negative consequences.
My intention is not to lightly reference a serious situation like the one from Rust to one that can seem so trivial like grown adults playing a game for our entertainment, but it is a principle that can apply to anything: Leave well enough alone.
Within reason, Bryce Young is as good of a football prospect as you’ll ever see. I don’t want to pick nits over other great football prospects in history because there’s no point in doing that; the debate of Young or “This Guy” lead nowhere and won’t change the fact that Young is the quarterback prospect that the Lions, Texans, Giants, and Eagles desperately wish was available to them in 2022.
Not Matt Corral, Malik Willis, or Kenny Pickett. There is no logical reason for Young or players like him to be held out of this draft, there are only technical ones: the NFL has a rule. It doesn’t matter if the rule makes sense or not, it just exists and we accept it year after year. But few years have provided such a stark contrast towards the QB prospects who are being held out of the class and the ones who will be available instead.
Following the SEC Championship game, Young has gone 315-of-463, 68% completions, 10.8 adjusted Y/A, 43 TD, 4 INT.
Like his predecessors, he was dominant against inferior walks-in-the-park like Southern Miss and New Mexico State (combined 41-of-45 for 583 yards, 10 TD, 1 INT), but he also didn’t let up against the likes of Georgia, Arkansas, Texas A&M, or Ole Miss. His worst game of the season came against Auburn, one of the best defenses he faced this year, and he played respectably enough to win in four overtimes that day.
If there is a reason that Bryce Young isn’t the number one pick in 2023, it’s probably because the other guy’s name is C.J. Stroud.
Yet another argument against the NFL’s “three years out of high school” rule, but tight ends Brock Browers and Michael Mayer also have nothing left to prove in college.
In 2022, it’s possible that we see Aidan Hutchinson, Kayvon Thibodeaux, and Derek Stingley, Jr. as the top three picks. If Young and Stroud were in the conversation however, then at least two of those three players—Hutchinson, Thibodeaux, or Stingley—wouldn’t be going in the top three. Instead, Young or Stroud will return to their respective programs to make another run at a national championship and/or Heisman trophy, but should they?
No.
Skipping your final season of college football may no longer be unusual for certain players and it could be the final straw that breaks the NFL’s three-year rule.
In 2020, we saw a lot of top-ranked NFL Draft prospects skip the season because of Covid-19 giving them the option to do so. This included Ja’Marr Chase and Micah Parsons, both of whom will get consideration not just as Pro Bowlers, but as 2021 All-Pros; not just “in spite of” opting out the year before but arguably “because of” that choice.
Rookie tackles Penei Sewell and Rashawn Slater, two more 2020 opt outs, are also regularly mentioned as not just good for their experience level but ready to be counted amongst the best at their position in the league. First round pass rushers Gregory Rousseau and Joe Tryon-Shoyinka also seem to be in just the right place in their development paths and didn’t seem to need a final college season to get where they are.
The 2022 NFL Draft class could end up as anything from “the worst” to “the best”—all possibilities still exist—but at the moment it doesn’t appear to be that good. At least not at quarterback. There are important positions that do appear to be strong, such as offensive tackle and pass rusher, but what we’re witnessing more and more often is a league that features so many teams that are increasingly desperate to find a quarterback…desperate enough to use three first round picks on Trey Lance and two on Justin Fields.
These are some teams that could be ready to make the next desperate move and their current place in the draft order: Lions (1), Texans (3), Giants (6, 7), Falcons (8), Panthers (9), Vikings (10), Saints (11), Eagles (12, 13), Broncos (14), Raiders (15), Browns (16), Eagles (17), Steelers (18), Dolphins (19), Washington (20), Lions (24).
Am I exaggerating?
With that many teams looking for a miracle at quarterback, Corral, Pickett, and Willis may be the minimum number of first round picks at the position. Even though logically speaking—there’s that tricky word again—none of them really look like they would have earned that distinction a decade ago with the same resume. If Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud were involved though, Detroit and Houston’s QB search would definitively be over.
And the NFL would be better for it because good picks are good for the league. Bad picks are not. I don’t want to write more stories about the next pick that seems like a reach. It would be much more satisfying to spend the next four months talking about Bryce Young as a draft prospect, instead of as a guy we all wish was a draft prospect.
If Young wins the national championship, he’s got no reason to go back to school. If Young loses in the College Football Playoffs, same answer.
Watch: Boom or Bust The Draft Show
My favorite NFL Draft YouTube channel is Boom or Bust and I mean it when I say this: It is a better draft show than anything on the NFL Network or ESPN. Chalk that up as a condemnation of those two networks if you’d like to (the production quality for those media giants and these young guys making videos in their bedrooms is fairly equal) but I have also rarely seen quality of knowledge from the talking heads like I’ve seen from this team of YouTubers.
The most recent video is a 2022 NFL Mock Draft and there were a few picks that surprised me, so let’s go over some notable moments:
Aidan Hutchinson goes first overall. He’s ascended as a prospect to the level of a “Bosa” or “Watt” at this point.
Garrett Wilson goes fifth, which is much higher than I would’ve projected before watching the video. That’s as high as Ja’Marr Chase went this year. Every class and every draft order/needs is different but is Wilson a locked in “top-10 prospect” at receiver? That’s a big deal!
LB Nik Bonitto went eighth and is described as a top-tier pass rushing prospect in the mold of Melvin Ingram.
Matt Corral goes ninth to the Eagles.
Tyler Linderbaum goes 11th, which would make him one of the highest-graded centers ever.
At 12, the “Vikings” selected DE David Ojabo out of Michigan. This is officially the first name in the mock that I admit was nowhere near my radar.
Kenny Pickett went 13th.
CB Trent McDuffie is 16th.
I’m shocked to see Sam Howell remaining in the first round as he went 17th in this mock. Again, if Young and Stroud were allowed to participate, there’s no chance that the Denver Broncos use their highest pick on a QB like Howell; he’s far too risky. If Young and Stroud are around, then suddenly Pickett and Corral become available later in the first round, which is much more suiting.
DeMarvin Leal at 18—is he falling?
CB Roger McCreary goes 26th.
Alabama safety Jordan Battle went 28th.
And Andrew Booth was the final pick of the first round.
How does this compare to some other mock drafts?
Ryan Wilson at CBS Sports has Hutchinson going first overall too. But he has Ikem Ekwonu going second and Corral going third. Ojabo is 14th (solidifying that I missed the memo on that one), Carson Strong is 18th, George Karlaftis falls to 22nd, Malik Willis is 24th, and another surprise to me is DB Daxton Hill at 25.
Chris Trapasso also goes with Hutchinson first, but he’s sticking to Evan Neal as the top-ranked tackle. Others seem to be fading on that opinion. Another new name to me here is DE Arnold Ebiketie at Penn State, who Trapasso has at 23 to the Chargers.
“You wait -- Ebeketie is going to ascend boards over the next few months. He's a chiseled, twitched up rusher who's gotten better each season at Penn State.”
And PFF’s Mike Renner has Hutchinson at 1, Kenny Pickett at 3, and Georgia EDGE Travon Walker going 10th overall. Renner is also sticking to the story that Howell is a first round pick.
I wonder what these mock drafts would look like though if the NFL had a “two-year rule” instead of the current format.