FMIA: What the First Four Teams Will Do on Draft Night and Owners Challenging Goodell

I see by the calendar it’s Draft Month, exactly T-minus 24 days from teams getting to open their offseason presents. Since the four marquee players—the first-round quarterbacks—have finished their Pro Days following the Anthony Richardson workout Thursday in Gainesville, I thought I’d tell you how the very top of the draft board stands from what I heard at the league meetings, with some info gleaned over the weekend.

Then we’ll get into some feistiness from Phoenix. The league meetings aren’t usually very feisty, but when the league tried to ramrod a short-sighted, anti-common-sense, anti-freight-paying-fans flex-scheduling proposal through the membership, 10 teams said, Hold on commissioner. This stinks. And good for them.

First, draft gossip. Team by team at the top, here’s what I’m hearing:

1. Carolina. Bryce Young has a lot of fans inside the Panthers.

“You’re the one who started that?” Panthers coach Frank Reich said to me at the league meetings, about this QB-height thing I wrote about in March: Reich’s been a QB coach, coordinator or head coach for 17 years, and in all but six of the games in those 17 years, his quarterback was 6-4 or taller. He told me height of the quarterback is not really a thing. So the 5-10 Bryce Young and 6-3 C.J. Stroud are both very much alive in the running for the first pick in the draft. And I believe him, absolutely.

But one longtime friend of Reich’s told me the height thing is legit with him, and though Reich hasn’t told him so, this friend would be surprised if Young were Reich’s top choice. Reich’s not saying. The other thing I hear is several influential voices in the organization favor Young. That doesn’t mean Young will be the pick—not at all. This will be a collaborative