Pickup basketball, friendship and the inevitable stakes of Bryce Young vs. CJ Stroud

Andy Dalton doesn’t claim to know everything quarterback Bryce Young is going through in his rookie season — but there’s something in particular he can relate to.

“The comparisons, for sure,” Dalton said.

Dalton, like Young does now, started as a rookie in 2011. He was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the second round and was the fifth of 12 quarterbacks selected that year. Dalton can list a bunch of the other 2011 rookie quarterbacks off the top of his head, particularly the ones drafted around or ahead of him. There was Jake Locker and Blain Gabbert. Christian Ponder and Colin Kaepernick. There was Cam Newton, too, who the Carolina Panthers took with the overall No. 1 pick.

In the early days of his career, Dalton acknowledged to the Observer with a smile that he’d check in to see how the quarterbacks drafted in his class were playing. He’d make the comparisons himself. Everyone else was doing it, after all. It eventually became a source of pride, even, Dalton said: “Any time anybody in your draft class does well, you say, ‘That’s what we do!’”

But Young, this past year’s overall No. 1 pick, is a bit different than his veteran understudy:

Comparisons aren’t really his thing.

“I actually asked him, ‘Have you seen what these guys are doing?’” Dalton said. “And he’s like, ‘I really have not taken a look at any of it.’”

The rookie seasons of CJ Stroud and Bryce Young

Young will lead the Panthers (0-6) against the Houston Texans (3-3) at 1 p.m. Sunday in Bank of America Stadium, an out-of-conference matchup that normally isn’t particularly compelling.

But this game is different — it’s all about Bryce Young vs. CJ Stroud.

The stakes of the Week 8 matchup in Carolina are understandably high, just as they were before the season began. Young out of Alabama was taken No. 1 overall in April’s draft by the Panthers, and Stroud out of Ohio State was taken by the Texans at No. 2. The two quarterbacks were scrutinized and compared ad nauseam in the months leading up to the draft. Their height and weight differences spawned new headlines every day. So did their respective “intangibles” and their winning percentages and their S2 cognitive scores.

Those comparisons followed them into the league, too. Stroud got off to one of the fastest starts of any rookie quarterback in NFL history. It took him a record 192 passing attempts to throw his first interception as a professional, and the 6-foot-3, 218-pound quarterback is on pace to contend for the rookie passing yards record set over a decade ago by Andrew Luck.

Going into Sunday’s game Stroud has thrown for 1,600 yards and nine touchdowns.

Young, meanwhile, got off to a slower start. Through six games played, the 5-foot-10, 194-pound Young is averaging just over 161 passing yards a game — 967 overall — and has recorded six touchdowns and four interceptions. He’s done some impressive stuff, surely, including breaking the record for most consecutive completions against the Vikings in Week 4; he’s also played well in the team’s most recent two games against two vaunted defenses.

When asked about the inevitable stakes of this game, given it’s another data point for consideration between Young and Stroud, Young said he has tried to focus on the things only he can control — on “running my own race.”

Head coach Frank Reich has also fielded questions several times this week (and season) about the two quarterbacks, and he’s stayed consistent: Young is who we wanted and who we still want.

“I never said that to one person, anytime, anywhere,” Reich said earlier this week, in response to a question of whether he preferred Stroud to Young because of Stroud’s size. “All I said was I like CJ Stroud a lot. I’ve said this many times: I liked that whole quarterback draft class. They were all really good prospects. I think they’re all going to have really good NFL careers.

“My eyes and our eyes were on Bryce Young from start to finish. You look at the film. You talk to the man. You get a sense of the leader, the player and what he is and what he can be. … We got the guy for us.”

The two quarterbacks were first hoopers

An added layer of intrigue to this matchup? The two quarterbacks are close friends.

Young and Stroud grew up not far from each other in Southern California. The two faced off in basketball in middle school before they did on the football field. Their first meeting in a football game was a rainy matchup between the Inland Empire Ducks (Young) and Pomona Valley Steelers (Stroud). “They killed us,” Stroud remembered with a smile earlier this week. “Like, terribly.”

The two grew close over the years as friends — connecting over their shared, strange existence as high-level athletes. They attended the same camps during the college recruitment processes in high school. They worked out together for pro scouts ahead of the 2023 draft. They made mutual friends. They each called each other great people as well as football players in separate press conferences this week, and they both spent a lot of time discussing the legendary pickup basketball games they’d play in between workouts in SoCal this summer.

Stroud, for instance, explained that the two shared a quarterback trainer, and that their QB coach told Stroud and Young not to guard each other because it “gets too competitive” that way. Stroud added Young is “quick” and “has a really good jump shot” and even “talks a little bit.”

Young, similarly, spoke highly of Stroud’s basketball game. He called him a knockdown shooter, and he contends that Stroud’s NBA comp is Michael Porter Jr., a key piece on the Denver Nuggets’ title run a season ago. (Young, when pressed about it, said he thinks his own NBA comp is the Cavaliers’ Darius Garland.)

“It’s a blessing, just to know that we’re from the same area, grew up knowing each other,” Stroud said. “Our moms are really close. Our dads know each other. It’s cool to just see somebody as their journey has gone from high school to college and now into the league — it’s a blessing to have a brother like that to go through the same type of struggles, the same type of pressures. So we talk a lot about that stuff. … It’s a blessing to have someone like that in my life.”

Said Young: “I’ve talked to him throughout the (draft) process and the season. He’s just someone I’m really close with. Really great person. Really great human being, first and foremost. From a great family. And obviously a great player as well, doing a lot of great things. So yeah we’re really close and have a ton of respect for him. That’s (true) not just this year but for a while now.”

‘It’s not just about this year’

The pitting of the two stars started all the way back then, well before their college careers and the NFL draft and the beginnings of their professional footballing careers. What we know now: It hasn’t stopped yet — and certainly won’t anytime soon.

“They’re going to be compared to each other, that’s just how this thing goes,” said Dalton, Young’s aforementioned veteran backup. “But, in the grand scheme of things, as much as we want to have the success this year, as much as the Texans want to have all the success this year, it’s not just about this year. It’s about the future and what you’re building.”

Dalton added: “The cool thing is both of them have done some really good things so far. Obviously we’re still trying to find our first win. But just from a talent, skill, ability level, both of those guys are heading in the right direction.”

Just as they pretty much always have.