Byron Young was born on March 13, 1998, in Georgetown, South Carolina, and attended Carvers Bay High School in Hemingway, South Carolina, where he drew almost no recruiting attention from college programs. Before his football career took off, he worked part-time at a Burger King and later at a Dollar General store in Columbus, Georgia, rising to assistant/associate general manager to help make ends meet. With no scholarship offers out of high school, he walked on to Georgia Military College, a junior-college program, in 2020, where he was ranked the No. 10 junior-college prospect in the country — a launching point that, six years later, led Dollar General itself to bring him back as a business partner.

Young’s junior-college performance earned him a scholarship to the University of Tennessee, where he played defensive end and outside linebacker for the Volunteers in 2021 and 2022. In his first season with the Volunteers, he started the final eight games and recorded 46 tackles while leading the team with 5.5 sacks. In 2022 he broke out further, posting 2.5 sacks in a nationally televised game against LSU and earning first-team All-SEC recognition from conference coaches. Over his two seasons at Tennessee he totaled 24 games played with 21 starts, 83 tackles, 23.5 tackles for loss, 12.5 sacks, and 22 quarterback hurries, turning his story from a Dollar General employee into a top-100 prospect for the 2023 NFL Draft.

The Los Angeles Rams selected Young in the third round (77th overall) of the 2023 NFL Draft. He started as a rookie and led all first-year edge rushers with 8.0 sacks and 61 total tackles (42 solo), adding two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery — production that earned him a spot on the PFWA All-Rookie Team and a seventh-place finish in Associated Press Defensive Rookie of the Year voting. He followed that with 7.5 sacks in 2024, then set career highs across the board in 2025 with 12.0 sacks, 82 tackles (45 solo), 29 quarterback hits, and a forced fumble over 17 games, earning selection to the 2026 Pro Bowl Games. Through the 2025 season his career totals stand at 205 tackles, 27.5 sacks, and 4 forced fumbles, and the NFL ranked him No. 84 on its Top 100 Players of 2026 list.

Young remains with the Rams for the 2026 season, the final year of his rookie contract, but the roster around him has changed significantly: in a blockbuster 2026 trade, the Rams acquired edge rusher Myles Garrett from the Cleveland Browns, sending outside linebacker Jared Verse and three draft picks the other way, and immediately signed Garrett to a reworked five-year deal worth more than $37 million in 2026 alone. Analysts have suggested the Garrett investment makes it unlikely the Rams can also afford to keep Young long-term, while other reporting in August 2026 described Young as an extension priority the team is still weighing — with Young himself saying publicly that he wants to remain in Los Angeles. As of this writing he is playing out his contract year and is set to become an unrestricted free agent in 2027 if no extension is reached.

Young does not have a publicly disclosed personal income statement, so his annual earnings are best approximated from his NFL contract cash flows, which are a matter of public record through NFLPA-reported figures aggregated by Spotrac and Over The Cap. His cash compensation has risen steadily on his rookie-scale deal: roughly $1.79 million in 2023 (including his signing bonus), about $1.0 million in 2024, about $1.26 million in 2025, and a large jump to $5.77 million in base salary for 2026 — a structure consistent with the kind of late-contract-year escalation common for productive Day 3 draft picks on rookie deals. Outside football, his income also includes an undisclosed amount from his 2026 Dollar General partnership, the size of which has not been made public.

Young signed a four-year, $5,555,238 rookie contract with the Rams on July 14, 2023, as documented by both Spotrac and Over The Cap. The deal included a signing bonus of $1,040,172, all of which was guaranteed at signing, against an average annual value of roughly $1.39 million — typical for a third-round pick under the NFL’s rookie wage scale. Over The Cap’s year-by-year breakdown shows a base salary of $750,000 in 2023, $1,002,511 in 2024, $1,255,022 in 2025, and $5,767,000 in 2026, with cap hits rising from just over $1 million to just over $6 million across the same span; the 2026 jump reflects the final year of his rookie deal rather than any new contract. Only the original $1,040,172 signing bonus is guaranteed money — the rest of the deal’s total value is base salary that Young has had to earn on the field year by year, which is an important distinction from the $5.56 million “contract value” headline figure. He is playing 2026 without an extension in place; Spotrac’s market-value model projects a second contract, if signed, in the range of roughly $30 million per year based on comparable edge-rusher deals, though that figure is a projection, not a signed agreement, and some outlets have floated even larger unsourced totals that should be treated with caution until an actual deal is reported.

Young’s most notable endorsement relationship is with Dollar General, the retailer he worked for as an assistant/associate general manager before his NFL career. In 2026, Dollar General brought him back in an official partner capacity, framed by both the company and outlets covering the story as a full-circle tie between his current NFL platform and the store where he worked to make ends meet six years earlier. The financial terms of the partnership have not been publicly disclosed. Beyond the Dollar General relationship, there is no well-documented record of a shoe deal, apparel contract, or other major national brand campaign for Young — consistent with a player who, prior to 2026, had yet to sign a second NFL contract or reach the earnings tier that typically attracts larger endorsement portfolios.

Public reporting does not document Young founding or owning an outside business, and no investment portfolio, venture stake, or other outside company tied to him has been reported. His Dollar General relationship is described in coverage as a brand partnership rather than an equity or franchise-ownership stake, and no source reviewed here characterizes it otherwise. Independent reporting does credit him with community-facing “pay it forward” activities in and around his hometown, including work highlighted by regional and national outlets, but no dedicated, formally registered charitable foundation in his name was found in available public records.

No public property records, real estate listings, or vehicle purchases tied to Byron Young were identified in the sources reviewed for this profile. That absence is consistent with his financial profile: through the 2025 season his career on-field cash earnings totaled only a few million dollars on a rookie-scale contract, a level at which NFL players’ major purchases are far less likely to draw the kind of press or public-records coverage that follows players on second contracts. Any specific property holdings should be treated as unconfirmed until verifiable public records or on-the-record reporting surface.