After months of workouts, measurements, interviews, speculation, prognostication and whispers about players rising and falling for inscrutable reasons, the top of the on Thursday night went roughly the way experts thought it would go at the end of the last college football season.
The Top Picks
The Carolina Panthers, who traded with the Chicago Bears in March to obtain the top pick, kicked things off by selecting Alabama quarterback Bryce Young.
Young, the 2021 Heisman Trophy winner, stands just 5-foot-10 but possesses an impeccable scouting report, outstanding statistics and an exemplary off-field reputation, making him similar to the early 2010s version of Russell Wilson.