Stroud, Richardson, Young: These three NFL rookies are shaking up the league

Stroud, Richardson, Young
These three NFL rookies are shaking up the league

By Constantin Eckner
October 3, 2023, 8:18 a.m

The NFL season is only four weeks old, but three young quarterbacks are already drawing attention after just a few games. The draft class of 2023 is preparing to be a really big one.

CJ Stroud: The beacon of hope

“Everything we ask him to do or point out to him, he takes it to heart. He shows the results in the game the week after. And that’s great for a quarterback,” Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said of one another strong performance from CJ Stroud in Houston’s 30-6 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was Stroud’s fourth game in the National Football League, but the quarterback’s composure is already that of veterans in their eighth or 10th season. Stroud was selected second overall in the spring draft and came to the Ohio State Buckeyes with the recommendation of two “Griese-Brees Quarterback of the Year” awards.

The Buckeyes have rarely produced elite NFL quarterbacks over the past two decades, but Stroud could become just that. In particular, his precision coupled with an appropriate playbook and the appropriate selection of plays by offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik allow Stroud to shine so early in his NFL career. In the games so far, Stroud hasn’t caused a single interception, meaning none of his passes have been intercepted by the opponent.

With performances like these, the 21-year-old Californian breathes new life into the Texans. The football community in Houston was recently disillusioned, especially after former star quarterback Deshaun Watson announced his intention to move in 2021 and was also confronted with allegations of sexual assault a short time later. Watson’s star, who is now playing poorly for the Cleveland Browns, went down and with it, for a while, Houston’s hope of playoff football.

Of course, the team around Stroud is nowhere near at the level to claim championship games. But the new quarterback brings euphoria back to NRG Stadium and could even ensure that the Texans as a team become attractive again to other experts in the NFL. After years of failure, a defiant underdog mentality has emerged in Houston that Stroud knows from college. “When I played for Ohio State, it was always ‘The Buckeyes against the rest of the world.’ Now I’m bringing that swag here: The Texans against the rest of the world,” Stroud said after the triumph over Pittsburgh.

Anthony Richardson: The exceptional phenomenon

While the Texans have only been able to win their own division six times since their founding in 2002, the Indianapolis Colts are a traditional franchise with two Super Bowl titles on their letterhead. But in the recent past, the organization under long-time owner Jim Irsay appeared as chaotic as that in Houston. The whole thing culminated in 2022 with head coach Frank Reich being fired and replaced by the former television expert and center Jeff Saturday. The Colts performed so poorly that they were ultimately allowed to select a player fourth in the draft and chose not a traditional quarterback like Will Levis, but rather the supposedly unpolished diamond Anthony Richardson.

During his short college career, he only played 24 games and only threw 393 pass attempts. Richardson didn’t bring the usual experience of other high-select quarterbacks, but he broke several records with his physical attributes at the scouting combine in February. In terms of his abilities, Richardson is the most athletic quarterback the NFL has ever had.

But can he really throw and create a game, skeptics and football purists asked in the summer. Richardson’s answer is a resounding “yes.” He is a playmaker precisely because he can explode out of the pocket with the ball in his hand and often finds the running routes quite intuitively. And his passing game is far more sophisticated than many initially assumed. The only catch might be that because of the amount of runs Richardson makes – he averages ten per game – he has and will continue to take hard hits from defenders. On the second weekend, Richardson had an incredibly strong first quarter against Houston, but was then hit unprotected by MJ Stewart on a 15-yard touchdown run. The result: concussion, end of game and a week off for him.

Richardson is sometimes compared to Cam Newton, the former star quarterback of the Carolina Panthers, because he was similarly athletic and explosive on the field. However, Newton steadily declined due to the accumulation of injuries. But for a while, the entertainment factor of “Super Cam” was immense – as is the case with Richardson in his first few weeks in the NFL.

Bryce Young: The number one with starting difficulties

The start was less spectacular for Bryce Young, who was selected first in the draft by the Carolina Panthers. Panthers coach Frank Reich summed it up a few days ago when he said that his team didn’t feel like a major rebuilding project at the moment. Typically, selecting a quarterback at a high position in the draft results in a previously floundering franchise attempting some sort of reset. The problem with Young, who won the fabled Heisman Trophy as the best college player in 2021, is that he doesn’t seem ready to lead a team to victory on his own, like Stroud and Richardson already do.

Young already has a leadership role in the locker room, but needs more time to get used to the pace and style of defense in the NFL. In the Panthers’ home loss to the Minnesota Vikings over the weekend, Young was brought down twice by Harrison Smith. One of those sacks set up the game-winning touchdown by DJ Wonnum for the Vikings. In a college game, Young might have been able to evade a rushing defensive player or read his route better, but Smith seemingly came out of nowhere for Young. The game is still going a little too quickly for the 22-year-old.

Previous vintages are wobbling

He is reminiscent of other quarterbacks who were recently selected in the draft. Specifically, the supposed top players of the 2021 class are currently going through a sporting valley. Trevor Lawrence is having a mixed season for the Jacksonville Jaguars. After the loss of Aaron Rodgers, Zach Wilson has to be the quarterback of the New York Jets again and despite his willingness to play, he sometimes has a long lead when he throws the ball from the pocket. Mac Jones made some brutal mistakes last weekend when he repeatedly threw the ball across the field outside the pocket, putting the New England Patriots on the losing end. Trey Lance, the number three pick in 2021, is currently sitting on the bench for the Dallas Cowboys.

Justin Fields, who like Stroud once played for Ohio State, also started the season extremely poorly, but then showed an almost flawless performance for around three quarters of the game against the Denver Broncos at the weekend, when he made 23 of his 24 pass attempts to his teammate by the final quarter brought. But in the final quarter he lost the ball twice, which enabled the Broncos to win after a 17-0 deficit and caused loud boos at Soldier Field in Chicago.

Stroud, Richardson and even Young aren’t getting that kind of audience reaction at the moment. In today’s NFL, quarterbacks usually don’t get any time to get used to it, because the franchises want to use the first four to five years of the contract, in which the rookies receive comparatively little money, to reach the salary cap by signing top players on others to exploit positions. The philosophy in many places is that a top team is built around a young, competent quarterback.

This approach could work particularly well with Stroud and Richardson. They’ve gotten off to a phenomenal start in the NFL – and in different ways. Stroud, the precision machine, and Richardson, the spectacular all-rounder, are what Americans like to call “box office.” Because of them, people go to the stadium or tune in to the broadcasts.