For the last four months, Bryce Young has stood in and taken the shots he knew were coming during the pre-draft process.

Not built to last in the modern-day NFL. Too short. Too slight. Too risky.

Young has fielded questions on his physical shortcomings and answered them with a “control what you can control” mindset. “It’s fair,” he said.

Young also took every opportunity he had — from interviews at the combine to his pro day workout at Alabama to visits at the facilities of the Carolina Panthers, Houston Texans and Las Vegas Raiders — to sell teams on his skills and his mentality.

On a stage Thursday night at Union Station Kansas City, Young got his “Welcome to the NFL” hug from Roger Goodell and took his pedestal as the top pick in the 2023 NFL draft.

There it was, at 7:17 p.m., the No. 1 selection.

The pick the Chicago Bears once owned was spent by the Panthers. For the 18th time in 25 years, the No. 1 player drafted was a quarterback, in this case a skilled and driven Heisman Trophy winner who could quickly become a leading candidate to challenge Jalen Hurts as the best quarterback in the NFC. Perhaps within the next 18 months.

The Panthers aren’t looking back. Neither are the Bears.

Both organizations now feel confident in their starting quarterbacks and optimistic their teams are in the early stages of a legitimate championship pursuit. In both Charlotte, N.C., and Lake Forest, there is also a hope that such forward-looking belief will remain strong two or three seasons from now.

Away we go.

In Chicago, the 2023 draft will always be viewed in large part through the prism of what Tennessee’s Darnell Wright becomes as a starting offensive tackle. An hour and 4 minutes after the Panthers picked Young, the Bears turned in their card for Wright and readied to sell the headliner of their draft class as a massive and mauling presence up front who can instantly add sturdiness and a bit of nastiness to the line.

Still, the Bears’ success in this pivotal offseason also should be assessed based on the path they have chosen at quarterback, affirming their belief in the development of Justin Fields and feeling secure in the decision to decline a reboot with a QB from this draft.

Young, for what it’s worth, has been widely lauded as the valedictorian of this class and wore that honor well Thursday. Now Bears general manager Ryan Poles must hope the new face of the Panthers franchise doesn’t leave him with intense feelings of regret up the road.

In fairness, any Fields-versus-Young comparisons in the coming years won’t be entirely fair if done strictly on a head-to-head performance basis. By trading away the No. 1 pick — the raffle ticket the Panthers used to claim Young — the Bears received an impressive roster-building gift basket in return.

Poles will continue to celebrate the return he got from that deal, which includes proven receiver DJ Moore, whomever the Bears choose at No. 61 on Friday night plus first-round chips to work with in 2024 and 2025.

That trade has received almost universal acclaim within the league, praised far more than it was ever questioned with Poles adding an established NFL standout to his offense while also stockpiling valuable draft capital.

But the conversation and judgments could change in the next few years if Young becomes an undeniable star and — perhaps as importantly — if Fields’ ascent doesn’t continue in impressive fashion.

Poles entered this offseason publicly stating he would “have to be absolutely blown away” to consider investing the No. 1 pick on a quarterback but promising to comprehensively assess this quarterback class. “You have to do your due diligence,” he said. “You have to investigate everything. You have to spend time with those guys just to make sure we’re making the right decision.”

As it relates to Young, the Bears met with the Alabama quarterback at the scouting combine in early March but traded the No. 1 pick the following week with Poles showing through actions that he hadn’t been blown away and announcing his intent to “see it through” with Fields.

Throughout the pre-draft process, the biggest knock on Young was established and underscored. By NFL standards, he is just plain little, which is understandably worrisome to many talent evaluators. At the combine in Indianapolis, Young officially checked in at 5-feet-10. His weight of 204 pounds was also thought to be somewhat manufactured — and perhaps hard to retain — given Young was listed at 194 during his final season at Alabama.

That brings justifiable durability concerns into the equation with the slightness in Young’s build causing more anxiety in league circles than his height deficiency.

Still, the longer the scrutiny on Young continued and the deeper teams dug, it also became apparent that his size might be his only significant flaw.

Those who study quarterbacks for a living continued falling hard for Young’s football IQ and ability to process. Talent evaluators have been even more mesmerized by his elite vision, feel for the game and what one NFL talent evaluator praised as “his slow heartbeat.”

Another league executive who watched Young play in person last season said the quarterback’s preternatural composure was “kind of disturbing initially” with nothing seeming to frazzle him. That exec felt unnerved at first that Young was so rarely unnerved when pressure was coming or chaos seemed ready to swallow him. Then he realized that was Young’s superpower, that the standout seems to have a fishlike sense for feeling motion around him with the ability to dart away from trouble in an instant.

That special trait, the exec said, can help Young dodge the durability concerns, allowing him to avoid or minimize the massive hits that can knock a player of his stature out for weeks.

Another talent evaluator singled out Young’s final college game as perhaps the defining performance of his 27 starts. With Alabama left out of the College Football Playoff and instead sent to the Sugar Bowl, Young could have easily shrugged, absorbed the disappointment and shifted his focus to the draft and his pro career. He could have opted out of the bowl game or went through the motions in the five-week lead-up to the game.

Instead, by all accounts, Young locked in like a galvanizing team leader should and was the engine of a 45-20 thrashing of Kansas State. His numbers on that Saturday afternoon in New Orleans: 15-for-21, 321 yards, five touchdowns. With the game well in hand, he sat out the final 11 minutes.

That performance caught the attention of former Vikings GM Rick Spielman, who without hesitation has labeled Young the cleanest prospect in this draft in terms of his football ability, intelligence and character. “He prepared like that was the national championship game,” Spielman said on the “Mully and Haugh Show” on WSCR-670 AM this week. “To me, he had one of his best games in his career.”

Another talent evaluator pointed to the 41-yard, go-ahead fourth-quarter touchdown pass Young threw to Ja’Corey Brooks at LSU in November as the perfect snapshot of who he is as a quarterback. With a six-man Tigers rush coming, Young sensed every pressure point while keeping his eyes downfield the entire play. Three defenders got a hand on Young, yet he made four sudden and purposeful moves inside a noisy pocket before finding Brooks and throwing a strike for the score.

Said NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah: “The Bryce Youngs don’t come around very often where you get somebody who doesn’t fit all the (physical) specs but is supremely talented. … He has the best tape of anybody in this class. I thought it was clear-cut.”

ESPN analyst Todd McShay likens Young to Drew Brees with his ability to naturally maneuver within the pocket and locate receivers. McShay also heard the cross-sport comparisons to four-time NBA champion Stephen Curry and didn’t scoff.

It made sense.

Size, schmize. Dude’s just a playmaker.

With Curry and Young, “the size just doesn’t matter,” McShay said.

“Because they are so different,” he added. “Everything is so slow to them. And the way they process things so quickly and see the whole field or the whole court is so similar. … (Bryce) has an elite ability to feel pressure, understand where it’s coming from, know when to bail, know which side to bail to, know how much time he still has and then he has the willingness and the toughness to wait to the last second (to throw).”

Jeremiah sees a quarterback with top-tier accuracy, an astute surgeon who understands how to manage games and a Type A competitor who relishes being thrown into clutch moments late in games. Jeremiah’s punctuation on the review of Young?

“If this was like a blind taste test, if you just read the notes on Bryce Young and didn’t look at how big he was and then you read your notes on Joe Burrow, they would read almost identical,” he said. “I think he is that type of a player, that type of a talent.

“You’re going to take the risk with him with his body type. It is what it is. It’s not ideal. But the rest of it is really, really good.”

Like many personnel folks around the league, analyst Brian Baldinger understands why the Bears chose to stay the course with Fields, working hard this offseason through free agency and the draft to upgrade his supporting cast and put him into a more favorable proving ground.

Is there a leap of faith involved? Sure. But the decision was based not only on the flashes of playmaking brilliance Fields showed last season but also by the way he handled himself and the team and how his preparation habits and leadership skills remained strong from August until January.

“Justin took a step in the right direction,” coach Matt Eberflus said. “Obviously he made some dynamic plays that the whole league was talking about. But now, just like the whole football team, he needs to take the next step.”

Baldinger believes Bears fans are justified in feeling excited about their quarterback’s future while not worrying about any “What could have been” scenarios.

“I just feel like this is the year (Justin) can make a leap,” said Baldinger, who works for Audacy, Fox Sports and NFL Network. “Like a real leap. It’s just the old-fashioned progression. It’s not (Patrick) Mahomes and Joe Burrow who just hit it and ran with it. He needed time. And with the way they’ve brought him on, I feel like he’s ready to explode and become like a top-10 level quarterback this year.”

If that happens, there will be no looking back.

Still, it remains fair to wonder whether the Bears’ optimism about Fields coupled with Poles’ eagerness to learn of his haul from trading the No. 1 pick might have affected the team’s assessment of this quarterback class. Was the homework on Young — and Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, Kentucky’s Will Levis, Florida’s Anthony Richardson and Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker — fully comprehensive?

Ultimately, did Young’s size deficiency make the Bears hesitate?

The Bears will play host to the Panthers for a game at Soldier Field this fall — date and time TBD. If Fields and Young connect for a pregame introduction, the Bears quarterback will look imposing with a 4-inch and 25-pound size advantage.

Young, though, for what it’s worth, likely will handle that the way he has whenever he has been criticized for his size.

“I know who I am,” Young said at the combine. “I know what I can do.”

On Thursday night, the Panthers showed their belief in that. It’s something for the Bears to keep an eye on.

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