For Bryce Young, it all comes down to ‘a calm state of mind’

Time speeds up for Bryce Young. He is six months out of his teens and he plays quarterback with the poise of an NFL veteran. It is easy to forget, as we prepare to watch the Alabama sophomore win the Heisman on Saturday night, that he is a first-year starter. Four months ago, no one knew how he would handle college defenses at full throttle.

Miami came into the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic ranked No. 14. Young picked them apart like they were stone crabs. He threw for 344 yards and four touchdowns in his first college start. No Tide quarterback ever had thrown for four scores in his first start. Not Harry Gilmer. Not Bart Starr or Joe Namath or Kenny Stabler or A.J. McCarron or Mac Jones.

Time slows down for Bryce Young. When he is placed in a situation that would cause most mortals to panic, Young exhales. Take his first road game, before 91,000 raucous fans at the Swamp. It’s not that Alabama prevailed 31-29 over Florida, it’s how the Tide did it. In the fourth quarter, having watched the Tide’s 18-point lead dwindle to five, Young directed two long drives that ate up nine minutes of clock, stunted the Gators’ momentum and led to a field goal that provided the winning margin.

At Texas A&M, before nearly 107,000 hostile fans at Kyle Field, Young brought Alabama back from a 14-point deficit in the third quarter to take a 38-31 lead in the fourth quarter with 5:00 to play before the Tide defense faltered.

At Auburn, which came out in defensive schemes it hadn’t shown in its previous 11 games. Young, sacked seven times, throttled by the Tigers for 58 minutes, trailing 10-3 with 1:35 left and no timeouts, led the Tide 97 yards in 12 plays for the game-tying touchdown. Alabama won 24-22 in four overtimes.

And last week in Atlanta, where Young set SEC Championship Game records for passing (421 yards) and total offense (461 yards) in leading the Crimson Tide from a 10-0 deficit to a 41-24 win.

Time speeds up for Young. He will win the Heisman not just because of the black-and-white of his numbers (314-of-462, 4,322 yards, 68.0 completion percentage, 43 touchdowns, four interceptions) but because of the gray in which he amassed them. He plays bigger than his size. He plays bigger than the moment. He plays older than his age. Always has.

Young is small … but so what?

Time always has sped up for Young. As a child, he usually played in the age group above him. As dad Craig says, “If you’re the best player in the gym, find another gym.” Bryce led a team of high school seniors to the championship game of a 7-on-7 tournament at a USC camp. Bryce was in eighth grade.

“I was more comfortable hanging around older kids,” Young said. “I wanted to push myself. I wanted to find the best competition. I just wanted to be challenged. That was always a big emphasis for me.”

He received his first scholarship offer in eighth grade, from then-Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury, who ignored his size. Even among players his own age, Young is small. It’s always been that way.

As a high school freshman, he went to a camp at the University of Washington.

“Toward the end of our camp,” said then-Huskies coach Chris Petersen, now a studio analyst for Fox Sports, “one of the coaches said, ‘Hey, you should probably see this kid. We got a quarterback and he’s got a Texas Tech offer.’ They show me who he is, and I’m like, ‘Him?’ He’s only about 5-8! Maybe.”

You couldn’t hear Petersen’s voice rise as he said, “Him?”

Baltimore Ravens receivers coach Tee Martin was USC’s offensive coordinator when Young committed to the Trojans before his junior year of high school (he flipped to Alabama a year later).

“He never had a problem with vision,” Martin recalled. “He did a good job of finding throwing lanes. He knows how to move within the pocket without breaking the pocket.”

We’re talking about a sophomore in high school. How many kids that age know how to move in the pocket without breaking it?

“Not many,” Martin said. “He’s unique. Over the years, you may see guys who abort the pocket too soon, don’t have the poise to see a concept or go through a progression before they take off. Bryce always knew when to take off and how to extend plays to make explosive plays downfield with his arm.”

Four years later, Young is listed at 6 foot, which will be true when Nike debuts cleats with 2-inch heels. Watch opposing teams in pregame warmups. They stare at Young. The opposing players don’t resort to catcalls. They just looked surprised.

Young has a preternatural calm

Time speeds up for Bryce Young. And then the game starts. The game starts, and time slows down.

He doesn’t escape the rush like the modern-day running quarterback, juking, jab-stepping and spinning in a dizzying array of athleticism. Young just glides away from trouble. He glides one way, slides a couple of steps the other, buying time in the pocket. He personifies the John Wooden saying, “Be quick but don’t hurry.”

“No one can teach calm,” Martin said. “No one can teach the lack of fear. It’s an intangible that, you can improve it through coaching but you kind of have it or you don’t. That’s a trait that not many at that position have consistently, regardless of age.”

The two long touchdown passes to Jameson Williams in the SEC Championship Game grabbed the headlines. The 13-yard touchdown pass to John Metchie III in the second quarter grabbed attention. Young stood in the pocket, looked downfield and saw Metchie running right to left into traffic. Young waved his left arm at Metchie, telling him, “No! Go the other way!” Metchie reversed course, Young threw a dart to where Metchie would be, and Alabama took a 14-10 lead it didn’t relinquish.

“He makes really fast decisions and has good judgment and he’s very accurate with the ball,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said of Young on ESPN College GameDay last month. “He doesn’t get his feathers ruffled very easily, which is really kind of good for that position.”

A quarterback needs to see the whole field, no matter what punishment he might incur. Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien has called it “staring down the barrel of a gun.” It’s the ability to stand in the pocket, see the blitzing linebacker coming at you, eyes big, malice aforethought, and deliver that 15-yard bullet over the middle in the split second before the malice arrives.

On the play before Young’s third-and-10, 28-yard dime to Ja’Corey Brooks for the tying score at Auburn with 24 seconds left, Young got hit by Auburn defensive end Eku Leota. Young’s right arm and hand went, his father said, “a little numb.”

“He couldn’t feel it, so he wasn’t sure how he was gripping it,” Craig said of the ball. “He wasn’t sure how it was going to come out. He was, ‘I hope this works out.’ ”

His arm was numb, then 87,000 Auburn fans were numb.

“When you start playing athletics, you’re trying to just — you have to feel everything out, feel your process out,” Bryce Young said. “For me, I’ve kind of realized how I operate the best and function the best is from a calm state of mind.

“It comes through reps. It comes through experience. Truthfully, it really comes through faith for me. How I look at everything is — I’m not really in control, I would say, of what happens. I’m not in control of outcomes. I’m a vessel. I’m a tool that’s being used. For me, it’s already been written. Everything’s determined. I have complete trust and faith in how everything’s going to unfold. That kind of clarity takes any sort of tenseness out for me. That’s what I believe, how I live by. That’s how I view it.”

And he’ll be back next season

Craig Young has a master’s degree in counseling. He and his wife, Julie, have one child. They have spent considerable time and energy parenting Bryce. But Craig is convinced that Bryce’s maturity is as much nature as it is nurture.

“Innately at his core, he is a responsible, God-fearing, humble, kind person,” Craig said of his son. “And he has a great spirit. He’s like his mom in so many ways. But I do think also, if that’s not guided in the correct way, the world can take advantage of you, or you can get negative results or you can turn to other coping mechanisms and that can go away.”

So far, so good. Bryce Young couldn’t remember the last time he felt rattled on the field.

“There are definitely times things don’t go as planned,” he said. “I might have missed a throw, missed a read, but for me, it’s how quickly can you get to the next play? How quickly can we turn the page?”

Petersen said the biggest issue for a coach at any level looking at a prospect is determining whether he can make the transition to a more sophisticated game against more talented players.

“That’s the one thing that coaches have trouble with all along,” Petersen said. “Does this translate from high school to college? How’s he going to handle all this stuff? The pros have the same thing. Is this going to translate to our game? You see the interview after (the Georgia game)? He’s just kind of calm. That’s just kind of who he is. That’s what the game looks like when he plays.”

In the next month, Young will receive more than one national award. He will lead No. 1 Alabama into a College Football Playoff semifinal against No. 4 Cincinnati and play for the opportunity to win a national championship. If he checks all of those boxes, if he leads the Crimson Tide to a second consecutive national title, the competitor always looking for the tougher challenge will have to settle for trying to do all of this again next season. The NFL won’t take Young or any other player until he is three years out of high school.

Finally, time will move for Bryce Young the same way it moves for everyone else.