Stroud had the benefit of going first. They took him out for seafood in Columbus, Ohio (he had the sea bass and a strawberry lemonade). He and Nicole Tepper hit it off.
“He really made a connection with Nicole,” her husband said. “He calls her Mama Tepp. He really does like Nicole. We had good meetings with him. You know, we all liked him.
After the workout (which was quite good), McCown laughed and challenged Stroud to a game of horse when he came on his visit. This was widely misinterpreted as an indication the Panthers were leaning his way. During the draft, body language experts all over the internet parse 30-second video clips on Twitter, and convince themselves of certain things.
Then they loaded up the planes (plural) and went to Alabama, and that’s when everything changed.
They took Young to dinner at Evangeline’s (he had the scallops, and a salad, hardly the kind of big meal you’d order if you were worried about being perceived as too small). But it wasn’t the dinner order that confirmed to them he was different; it was the conversation.
The benefit of having so many people involved is that you get a number of different perspectives on a single event. A lot of the talk was about abstract concepts like leadership, or charitable interests, or the player’s personal story. But there was also some granular football talk.
Caldwell — who, again, coached Peyton Manning, so he knows a thing or two about detail — asked Young about a particular play against Tennessee the year before.
“And he answered the questions, ‘Well, I knew that when the defensive player did a certain thing, he would move a certain way, and when the other guy did this, he would do a certain thing,'” Tepper recalled, his mouth falling open at the level of detail. “And I looked at Frank’s face, like, what? Who watches the tape that much? Now, I’ve seen this before only one time in my time around football. One person that will look at everything and study like that. Not only are you smart, and you have the fast processing speed, but you’re putting in the time to know the other team that well, OK. Now, the only other person that I know like that is Luke Kuechly. So that’s when you realize what you’re talking about with Bryce Young.
“The leadership, the hard work. It’s great to be smart. But if you don’t put in the work, that much detailed work, to know that sort of stuff. That’s special, though.”
Tepper was watching Reich when Young was breaking down his process of identifying opponent…
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