Tepper Talks Trading Up to One, Drafting Young + More

Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper met with the media following the selection of Bryce Young.

The conversation with Bryce Young on the phone

"So I got on the phone with him and I saw Bryce at the Super Bowl, you see a bunch of these guys at parties and such. So I said, 'Bryce, remember when we were at the Super Bowl? I told you we were going to pick a quarterback and I wasn’t kidding.' And I said, 'You want to trade in some Sweet Home Alabama for some Sweet Carolina?' He was just excited. I don’t know if you could see him on the screen he had tenseness in his face, but you could feel him be like I’m so happy, that kind of thing."

Mentioning Super Bowls to the fans after picking Bryce Young

"Well, when we went through the process of quarterbacks, as you guys know it was a very deep process with the head coach. We found what we believe is the best head coach that we could find and then set the head coach free to find the best staff he could find. So that was what we did. Going through the process of these quarterbacks, one of the questions we asked ourselves was which one of these guys can take us there (Super Bowl). What’s the probability that this guy can take us there? It was no sure thing. Not to talk about all the other guys, but this guy had the highest probability of winning Super Bowls. I speak for myself, and not to speak for Frank but I think Scott feels the same way, you want to win Super Bowls. There’s no sure thing here, but it was probability. We thought this guy has the best probability of winning us Super Bowls. The way he throws the ball, the way he’s a point guard, how you can use the different players on the field, how you might not have to have as many elite receivers because he’s the point guard, right? So he distributes the ball to people with routes. So we can save some money there, we can save money in other places and put that money on the defensive side of the ball. So this is a guy that when you talk about here, for us, for this Carolina Panthers team, from the draft with Matt Rhule and the process of putting the defense first and getting the defense set, then with Scott get the offensive line. This year with Frank we went out into free agency with different pieces we needed for wide receivers. We think we have some great route runners with [Adam] Thielen and Hayden [Hurst] and other people here, so that’s somewhat intentional and get what we need and now we have a point guard. And then with Scott, he has other people in this draft he’s going to be thinking about. So it’s a process."

If this is the most he's been involved in a draft

”I just set the process, these guys do the work. You guys have to understand, we’re here a year and a half, I didn’t know what the heck, I was on the business side. And so for the first year and a half, I was trying to figure out what was going on. And then COVID hit so we’re out of the building for two and a half years. We had a better chance last year to see what was right, wrong, different. And so with Scott, together, we just went through the process and the head coach, we wanted a guy who could find the best position coaches we could possibly get. I think we ran a fantastic process for finding these guys. I compliment Frank, he went through the process tirelessly looking for the best, not the person he knew, but the best person out there. And it is reflecting in the staff we have."

The process of trading up to No. 1

"When we were in there, we had a trade to go up to two and it was a three-way trade with Chicago and we were going to go up to two and the Texans were going to trade up to one. Chicago was going to be down to two and we were going to trade with Chicago. And so we were waiting, we had that trade kind of ready. And so we waited. I said what’s going on with these guys, this doesn’t feel right. And so Wednesday goes, Thursday goes, and we get to Friday and the Texans changed their mind about the trade. We go into the afternoon, it’s Friday afternoon and Scott talked to [Ryan] Poles and he got a value that he would accept for us to move up to one. And basically, we knew that we had to make a decision then. We wanted to get a trade done. We thought there were better people, including the Raiders, that had better trades on the line and if we waited, they may come and jump us if we waited on that day because we knew we were the burning hand. They knew they had to trade with us, a trade they could like. So we all decided that this was the better thing to do to trade up and it was a joint decision. Everybody was on board with it I think at the time and we knew if we didn’t do it then we may lose it. So we just made that decision together."

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