This week, the No. 1 overall picks from the 2023 and 2024 NFL Drafts will be under the bright lights of primetime. Bryce Young and the Panthers open Week 8 with a crucial "Thursday Night Football" game against the Packers, and Caleb Williams and the Bears close out the week with a "Monday Night Football" showdown against the Seahawks. Both quarterbacks will face tough road tests against conference foes with postseason ambitions.
And both quarterbacks are forever intertwined. Though Young is forever tied to 2023 No. 2 overall pick C.J. Stroud, and Williams is forever tied to the loaded 2024 class that included Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye, Young and Williams are a byproduct of one another.
In March 2023, the Panthers moved heaven and earth to jump from the No. 9 pick to the No. 1 pick, an all-time blockbuster that shaped not only the two franchises but the league as a whole. With Young hoping to get Carolina back on track Thursday, we look back on the trade. The Panthers were one of several teams exploring a trade up for a quarterback, ESPN's Adam Schefter reported at the time.
Carolina won out with a huge package. At the time, the Bears were committed to Justin Fields as their starting quarterback, even though they would have had plenty of options in the draft had they chosen that direction: Young, Stroud, Anthony Richardson and Will Levis were considered among the top prospects. But Fields, the No. 11 pick in 2021, had only been in the league two years.
The results had been poor, but so, too, were the surroundings. Fields' top receiver in 2022 was Darnell Mooney, who failed to crack 500 receiving yards. Fields, who nearly broke the quarterback rushing record in 2022, would get one more year, and bringing Moore into the equation was crucial for Chicago.
He was coming off a down 2022 season but had cracked 1,100 receiving yards each of the three years prior. The Panthers had been a mess ever since David Tepper bought them back in 2018. Tepper fired Ron Rivera midseason in 2019 and hired Matt Rhule in 2020, only to fire Rhule early in the 2022 season.
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