Caleb Williams came into the 2024 season with a lot of hype. Probably too much. The NFL has a bad tendency to raise unfair expectations of young players in their first seasons. Williams was a star at USC, winning a Heisman and putting up crazy numbers. He also had the bad luck of arriving a year after C.J. Stroud had one of the best rookie seasons a quarterback has ever produced. That put a lot of pressure on the #1 overall pick, and it seemed to show in his debut against the Tennessee Titans.
He finished 14 of 29 for 93 yards. His frustrating afternoon was characterized by inaccurate passes and an inability to handle pressure. Many had inevitable knee-jerk reactions, wondering if they may have overestimated Williams’ ability. This has to be the worst debut a #1 overall pick has ever had, right? After going back to look at every quarterback who has been in that spot since 2000, the simple answer is not even close.
Michael Vick
- 4-of-12 for 32 yards and 1 TD
David Carr
- 10-of-22 for 145 yards, 2 TDs, and 1 INT
Carson Palmer (didn’t start until second season)
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- 18-of-27 for 248 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT
Eli Manning
- 17-of-37 for 162 yards, 1 TD, 2 INTs
Alex Smith
- 9-of-23 for 74 yards and 4 INTs
JaMarcus Russell
- 23-of-31 for 224 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
Matthew Stafford
- 16-of-37 for 205 yards and 3 INTs
Sam Bradford
- 32-of-55 for 255 yards, 1 TD, 3 INTs
Cam Newton
- 24-of-37 for 422 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT
Andrew Luck
- 23-of-45 for 309 yards, 1 TD, 3 INTs
Jameis Winston
- 16-of-33 for 210 yards, 2 TDs, 2 INTs
Jared Goff
- 17-of-31 for 134 yards
Baker Mayfield
- 21-of-41 for 295 yards, 2 TDs, 2 INTs
Kyler Murray
- 29-of-54 for 308 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT
Joe Burrow
- 23-of-36 for 193 yards and 1 INT
Trevor Lawrence
- 28-of-51 for 332 yards, 3 TDs, 3 INTs
Bryce Young
- 20-of-38 for 146 yards, 1 TD, and 2 INTs
Caleb Williams did nothing out of the ordinary.
Based on the results above, people would’ve thought Alex Smith and Matthew Stafford were destined to be busts. Instead, Smith reached three Pro Bowls, and Stafford will likely go to the Hall of Fame after he retires. That list doesn’t include other notable names like John Elway and Troy Aikman, who also made ugly debuts. They were omitted just because rules were different in those days. Yet the trend remains the same. Rookie quarterbacks rarely play well in their first games. Many of them don’t even play mediocre.
The key to determining whether they have the capacity to play in the NFL is how they perform as the season progresses. If they still look like that in November and December, then yeah, there is a problem. However, most tend to smooth out the kinks and start playing more efficiently. Caleb Williams deserves the same grace period. His talent didn’t magically disappear. All of the problems that showed up against Tennessee were correctable. As the game slows down for him, the execution will improve.
“The NFL has a bad tendency to raise unfair expectations of young players in their first seasons.”
Wait, what? The NFL raises the expectations? No. It’s you idiots in the media who overhype guys who are just rookies. Some will have good years. Some won’t. A few will go on to be very good players. But, it’s really a crapshoot. If it wasn’t there would never be a draft “bust” again. Don’t blame the NFL for what YOU did and continue to do.
Belechik said something interesting. He wanted to run the ball more, but when Brady saw they could not run it on that play, he would audible out because wanting to run the ball is one thing, but actually running it well is another. So he learned from Brady that a 3 yard pass was better than a 3 yard loss on a run. We’ve been exposed to generations of “we get off the bus running the ball” crap where defensive coaches like Lovie never looked at a 1 rare gain running on 1st down as a bad thing. Let’s just… Read more »
The same people who are trashing Williams after his first start are the same people who said Ryan Poles had created the “best situation ever” for a rookie QB to come into. They never considered that it only takes a few injuries, or Nate Davis’s to take “best” to meh. They’re the same people who relentlessly trashed Cutler, Mitch, and Fields… These are the same people who said that Williams’ holding the ball in college (longer even than Fields did) was all due to being on a poor team with a bad OL and no real WR talent. They believed… Read more »
Lots of overreactions here. Shocker! It was an ugly Game 1 where the IOL was continually beaten. No QB is going to light it up under those circumstances. While Caleb deserves criticism for accuracy issues (Rome open down sideline, Keenan end zone pylon), the play calling was odd at times. Why didn’t Waldron call more swing passes to Swift, hooks over the middle to Kmet or rollouts for Caleb to avoid pressure? The Bears had success running the ball early but then got away from that. Why? Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. But execution and a change in OC… Read more »
@Beardown54 Word. Better poise and mechanics would be great to see on Sunday.
Many of the professional opinion-havers out there said the sloppy footwork he showed in camp was going to be an easy fix. But it’s still a problem and it led to inaccurate throws on Sunday. Let’s all hope he figures it out for this weekend.