The Carolina Panthers know which player they are taking with the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft. Head coach Frank Reich told assembled reporters that Panthers general manager Scott Fitterer walked into Reich's office in Monday and asked him which quarterback he wanted to take.
"It was kind of like a proposal," Reich said, according to NFL Media. "And I said yes. We have a consensus and we are excited."
We know the pick will be a quarterback. For much of the last few weeks, the general consensus has been that the quarterback would be Alabama's Bryce Young. Early Tuesday morning, bookmakers went haywire with the odds for Kentucky's Will Levis, with rumors swirling that he could potentially be Carolina's guy.
The late Levis smoke was so predictable, though, that we actually predicted it a week and a half ago, when the latest rumor was that the Panthers were still potentially interested in selecting Florida's Anthony Richardson. (The Richardson rumors followed a week or so of Young takes, which came after initial reports suggested opposing teams thought the Panthers were moving up to No. 1 overall for Ohio State's C.J. Stroud.)
This is how the cycle of the No. 1 pick conversation goes. There are four quarterbacks widely considered to be first-round picks, and it is a mortal lock that there will be a rumor that the Panthers are "intrigued by" or "enamored with" Will Levis sometime between now and the draft as well. This is all designed to get a team that is interested in one of those quarterbacks to offer a monster deal that the Panthers just can't turn down. In the event that doesn't happen, they'll just pick whichever guy they actually like the best.
The smart bet here is that the Panthers have known which quarterback they wanted since at least the day they moved up to No. 1, and that their choice has not suddenly changed. Still, the cycle has to play out this way for the benefit of the Draft Industrial Complex, and so the TV cameras have some suspense to build on when the Panthers do eventually come on the clock on Thursday night.
