Moments after receiving the shotgun snap, Bryce Young had a St. Frances linebacker charging towards him and closing in quickly.

It was a blitz from the Maryland school that worked perfectly. The linebacker was left unaccounted for and ran untouched through the middle of Young’s offensive line.

Any hesitation from Young and it would have been a sack.

Instead, it ended up being one of the first plays from Young that left St. Frances coaches looking on from the sideline in disbelief during that Sept. 14 matchup between two of the nation’s top high school football programs.

“The guy came unblocked and just drilled him and he still put the ball right on the money and completed the ball over the middle and they get the ball at the 1-yard line,” St. Frances co-head coach Henry Russell said. “That play was very special. It was like, ‘Holy crap. What are we supposed to do to stop this kid?’”

Being around top prospects is nothing new for Russell, who has coached several former and current Alabama players.

But after seeing Young — and after watching him account for 352 yards and four touchdowns during Mater Dei’s 34-18 win over his team — Russell had some lofty praise for the Crimson Tide’s new quarterback commit from California.

“Honestly, he’s probably the best high school quarterback I’ve seen in person,” said Russell, who coached in the 2018 Under Armour All-American game. “He’s electric. The poise he had and the control over the game he had for a high school kid, I haven’t seen that before. He’s special. He’s special. ... The kid made a lot of plays against us, more plays than anyone else has in a long time.”

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Landing Young, who flipped his commitment from USC to Alabama Sept. 22, is significant for Nick Saban and the Tide.

While Young doesn’t have prototypical size — he’s listed at 5-foot-11, 185 pounds — the Los Angeles native is a blue-chip dual-threat QB who surely has Crimson Tide coaches feeling even more optimistic about the post-Tua Tagovailoa era at Alabama.

In 247Sports’ individual rankings, Young is rated as a five-star prospect and as the fourth-best overall player in next year’s recruiting class.

“The kid can throw seven touchdowns on you in one game and he can then go and rush for four touchdowns in the next one,” said Mater Dei quarterbacks coach Taylor Kelly, who was a three-year starter at quarterback for Arizona State. “You kind of have to pick your poison with him.”

Young is the top player on the nation’s top-ranked high school team and is the latest big-time quarterback to come out of Mater Dei, a California program that’s produced ex-USC stars Matt Leinart and Matt Barkley as well as others like current USC quarterback and former five-star recruit JT Daniels.

It’s possible, according to his coaches, that Young could end up being even better than all of those previous Mater Dei quarterbacks.

“He’s extremely advanced for his age,” said Kelly, who has also been a private quarterback coach for Young, Daniels and other current college and NFL quarterbacks. “JT was extremely advanced at that age as well. Bryce is right there with him, if not better.”

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Young has been on the radar for Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian since 2014, when Young — as a seventh grader — led a 12th grade team to the championship game of a 7-on-7 tournament at USC in front of Sarkisian and other members of that old USC coaching staff.

It wasn’t long after that Young began working with — and impressing — respected private quarterback coaches like Jordan Palmer and Adam Dedeaux.

“We first saw Bryce in eighth grade and — I’ll be honest —when we evaluated him that first time, we knew: this kid’s going to be special,” said Dedeaux, who has worked with about half of the NFL’s starting QBs, including Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan and Jared Goff. “At that level in eighth grade and at 14, 15 years old — with general things like arm strength and mechanics and with the way he moved and with his kinesthetic awareness and spatial awareness — he was doing things that juniors and seniors in high school weren’t and was at that level from a performance standpoint.”

After playing two seasons at another California powerhouse program, Cathedral in Los Angeles, Young transferred to Mater Dei last year and has excelled while competing against some of the best high school programs in the country.

Young threw for 3,846 yards and 39 touchdowns with just six interceptions last year as a junior, including 296 yards and two scores during a state title game win over De La Salle. He’s continued to put up standout numbers since then — both for Mater Dei and also at offseason events like the Elite 11 quarterback finals this summer.

During the 7-on-7 portion of the Elite 11 finals, Young completed 26 of his 31 passes with six touchdown passes and no interceptions, according to 247Sports.

“I think he showed his accuracy,” said Jordan Palmer, a former NFL quarterback who — in addition to the private quarterback training — is one of the Elite 11 coaches. “Also, at Elite 11, we install an NFL playbook and it’s completely different footwork than these guys are used to. So it showed me how coachable he is because it’s an NFL playbook, so there’s a lot to learn, and the footwork changes like crazy. We’re under center, asking them to do seven step drops, play action and turning your back to the defense, stuff that a lot of these guys haven’t done before. I would say that Bryce was among the top guys there in terms of his coachability.”

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One of the few bad moments for Young against St. Frances came courtesy of one of his fellow Alabama commits.

Five-star outside linebacker Chris Braswell sacked Young and forced a fumble that was recovered by St. Frances. That was back during the second quarter when Mater Dei’s lead was just 14-6.

From there, Young added the final two of his four rushing touchdowns and helped Mater Dei cruise to a win over a St. Frances team that previously hadn’t lost since November 2016.

Two weeks later, in his first game as an Alabama commit, Young showed off his arm in a nationally-televised win over St. John’s from Washington, D.C.

Behind Young, Mater Dei pulled away for a 53-24 victory after trailing 21-20 at halftime.

Young finished with five touchdown passes and 416 yards, including 61 yards on a perfectly-placed deep ball that traveled 50 yards in the air. It was part of a quick two-play, 84-yard drive for Mater Dei that began with the long throw and ended one play later with Young’s third touchdown pass in the first six minutes of the third quarter.

“There are a lot of different assignments and checks that we expect from a quarterback,” Kelly said. “It was challenging for Bryce at times during the spring last year (when he first got to Mater Dei) and he had to gradually learn to get ahead of it during the fall. Now, it’s his show. ... He’s far more advanced in that area and with the offense and his game of seeing the defense and putting us in the right play. Those are things a lot of high school kids aren’t doing. And for him to get repetition and experience with that against the top teams that we’re playing and against top Division I athletes is amazing.”

It should help Young with the college acclimation process, starting in January when he arrives at Alabama as an early enrollee.

The team’s current quarterback was a big-time recruit from out West.

Now, they have another one on the way.

One who continues to show how rare of a prospect he is with throws like that early one against St. Frances.

“I think he can be a special, special player,” Russell said. “I think he’s a winner and just seems like a kid that just works hard and is a good kid. I’d be surprised if he didn’t come in there and push for immediate playing time. He’s got all the tools, all the talent. And he’s certainly faced the best players in high school and the best teams in high school, so he’ll probably be as ready as any quarterback in high school football is to be able to come in and play early.”

Matt Zenitz is an Alabama and Auburn reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mzenitz.