All college quarterbacks have bad games—even future greats like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson. But what do those games signal about their NFL futures? And what does Williams’s Notre Dame tape show about his game?
It won’t be official until Roger Goodell calls his name at the start of the 2024 NFL draft, but we’ve known for months that Caleb Williams will be this year’s first pick. The USC star was the only quarterback the Bears brought in for an official predraft visit, and general manager Ryan Poles even skipped Drake Maye’s pro day in March, leaving little doubt that Chicago had settled on its guy. While we typically have to wait until after the draft for the inside scoop on how a team decided on its top draft pick, Poles got that out of the way early, explaining the Bears’ choice to the Chicago Tribune this week. The team store might as well get a head start on selling those no. 13 jerseys.
But while Williams is Chicago’s clear QB1, and has been viewed as the top overall prospect in the class for well over a year, there is some skepticism about how his unorthodox game will translate to the NFL. Williams is a daring playmaker who is willing to break the traditional rules of quarterbacking when a situation calls for it. He’ll leave a clean pocket, make a dangerous throw on the run, or toss proper throwing mechanics aside if it helps him make a play. USC’s stark offensive situation—featuring a leaky offensive line and a nondescript group of pass catchers—necessitated all of that and more from Williams in 2023. Which inevitably led to him making some mistakes—a big chunk of which came in one game, a 48-20 midseason loss to Notre Dame in South Bend. In that contest, Williams threw a career-high three interceptions and took a season-high six sacks. It was the most lopsided loss of his career, and the worst performance of his college tenure by a comfortable margin.
For some evaluators, that game—and the questions it prompted about Williams’s credentials—was concerning enough for them to drop him from the top of their board. ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky, for instance, has LSU’s Jayden Daniels as his no. 1 quarterback in this year’s class, in part because Daniels “didn’t have a Notre Dame game.”
“I know that Jayden Daniels didn’t have a game like Caleb Williams had at Notre Dame..
I go back to that game all the time & if I was Ryan Poles I would watch that game over & over” ~ @danorlovsky7 #PMSLive https://t.co/G6lpskxPH9 pic.twitter.com/fLCrYeI57d
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) March 29, 2024
The former NFL quarterback said the Bears should watch that game “over and over” and reconsider things. “He bails from the pocket a lot—up the middle,” Orlovsky said. “They threw him a bunch of different pressures that he struggled with … and he threw a lot of balls fading backward.” Orlovsky’s not the only evaluator with concerns about that particular game. An anonymous scout told Bob McGinn they also prefer Daniels over Williams because they “can’t get the f–king Notre Dame game out of my head.” After the loss, USA Today published an article headlined “Is USC QB Caleb Williams draft stock falling?” Pro Football Focus also reassessed Williams’s draft stock in the aftermath. And Williams called it his “first bad game in college.”
“I made mistakes that I usually don’t make,” Williams said. “I’ve been in college for three years now. I don’t think I’ve ever had a season or a game or anything [else] like that. … But games like this happen in careers when you play for a while—or want to play for a while.”
Williams is right: Games like this happen, even to quarterbacks who go on to be some of the NFL’s best. Patrick Mahomes, in his final year at Texas Tech, threw two interceptions in a 66-10 loss to Iowa State. Then-Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen had a two-pick game and averaged 4.4 yards per attempt in a 24-3 loss to Iowa. Lamar Jackson threw four interceptions and completed just 41.9 percent of his passes in his final collegiate outing, a 31-27 bowl game loss to Mississippi State. The sport’s three best quarterbacks had their own version of Williams’s stinker in South Bend, and those games were considered major red flags during those quarterbacks’ respective predraft processes.
We obviously know now that Mahomes, Allen, and Jackson are more than capable of leading NFL franchises. But I revisited the film from those games to try to figure out whether they provided glimpses of the quarterbacks they would ultimately become—and what, if anything, the Notre Dame game might tell us about Williams’s future.
Caleb Williams’s prospect origin story starts in 2017 with Patrick Mahomes. I don’t know that we’re talking about Williams as a generational prospect—and a lock to go first overall—if not for the success of the Chiefs quarterback.
Mahomes himself was not discussed by scouts in those terms in 2017. “He plays in that junk [spread] offense and has a lot to learn,” an anonymous scout complained about Mahomes to McGinn seven years ago. Which sounds an awful lot like this take on Williams from one of McGinn’s nameless evaluators in 2024: “He knows one offense, which you can write on one piece of paper, with Lincoln Riley. Of all those OU quarterbacks, he’s the most gifted, but none of them have really done it in the league.”
“That natural sense of making plays when they break down is unusual,” a scout said of Mahomes in 2017. “Now, can he make plays from structure? That’s why he’s not a top-10 pick.” Similar questions are being asked of Williams this draft cycle, but with the league now overrun with dynamic playmaking quarterbacks, evaluators are more willing to overlook those concerns. We know that archetype can win in the NFL. “Obviously, it’s very similar to how Mahomes played at Texas Tech,” a scout told McGinn. “[Williams] is constantly trying to hit the grand slam against just taking the single or the double. I have a hard time believing you can’t coach that out of him.”
Mahomes fell to the 10th pick in the 2017 draft because evaluators at the time needed more convincing that you could coach that sort of mentality out of a quarterback. And even looking back at his Texas Tech tape with perfect hindsight, it’s difficult to blame them for having their doubts. Mahomes, by his own admission, was a reckless decision-maker in college. He bailed from clean pockets, turned down open receivers underneath in search of a bigger play, and hadn’t quite honed his abnormally fluid throwing mechanics yet, so accuracy was an issue. Would you draft this quarterback with a top-10 pick?
His feet are a mess from the start, the decision is bad and made way too late, and the ball is thrown inaccurately and is nearly intercepted. He hardly resembles the quarterback who now plays for the Chiefs. But the flashes of his future brilliance stood out even in the worst game of Mahomes’s college career, the 56-point loss to a 3-8 Iowa State team.
The Cyclones set out to stop Mahomes from making the big-time throws that would get him drafted in the first round. They rushed three and dropped the rest of their players into coverage, looking to flood downfield zones with bodies. The aim was to make Mahomes play a patient game, something he hadn’t shown the willingness to do to that point in his career. He played along early, but abandoned the plan when Texas Tech fell behind big. The Red Raiders’ run game was useless that day, and the defense had no answer for the Cyclones offense. Even on his worst day, Mahomes slinging the ball downfield into the heart of the defense was Tech’s most viable path to victory. And mistakes are bound to happen when you put that kind of pressure on a young, reckless quarterback. But that burden never broke him. Even with his team down 50 and the Cyclones defense dropping into prevent mode, Mahomes found a way to make plays.
The play-making burden on Williams in 2023 wasn’t nearly as heavy as it was on Mahomes at Texas Tech, but USC asked a lot of the 22-year-old in his junior season. The offense line couldn’t protect, the receivers lacked juice, and Riley’s play designs didn’t create easy opportunities in the passing game. The leaky defense didn’t hold an opponent under 30 points after the month of September. Williams’s play was the only thing keeping USC together, but there’s only so much a quarterback can do to elevate his team.
If you need more proof of that, just turn on the Wyoming-Iowa tape from the 2017 season. That game was billed as a showcase for Allen, who had received a lot of attention playing in the Mountain West Conference, and it was many football fans’ first exposure to the future Bills star. Unfortunately for Allen, things got pretty damn ugly. The Cowboys scored three measly points, and Allen put up a stat line to forget, finishing 23-of-40 for 174 yards, no touchdowns, and two interceptions. He also lost 8 yards on 10 rushing attempts. “Wyoming draft darling Josh Allen stymied in first tough test,” was ESPN’s headline for the game story.
Outside of league circles, Allen’s perception as a prospect never really recovered after that. He was written off as a quarterback who had impressive physical traits but lacked the skill to play quarterback at a high level. Allen was inaccurate, he made questionable decisions, he didn’t put up impressive numbers, and his team didn’t win anything of note. There was no shot of this working, and the Iowa game was proof.
But while fans watching at home may have dismissed Allen after that game, the Iowa defenders who had to quarrel with the big, talented quarterback came away thoroughly impressed. Future NFL linebacker Ben Niemann called Allen “a great player” with “unreal arm.” “You’re not going to slow him down unless you play really good team defense,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said of Allen after the game. “He can hurt you with his feet and his arm,” future Panthers linebacker Josey Jewell said of Allen at the time. “We just had to understand coming into the first game that we’re going to have to communicate well, we’re going to have to play with good fundamentals and make sure tackles.”
Allen may not have played well against the Hawkeyes, but his physical abilities stood out. Even with a handful of future pros on the defense, Iowa had issues corralling the 6-foot-5, 238-pound quarterback, whether he was running in the open field or making a move in the pocket to launch a pass downfield. Allen didn’t play like an NFL quarterback in the game, but he sure looked like one on a few plays.
Those flashes of talent were enough to keep Allen at the top of draft boards. And they were enough to convince the Bills to trade up to draft him with the fifth pick, a move that was seen as risky even inside league circles. “He looks the part and a good athlete,” an anonymous scout told McGinn ahead of the 2018 draft. “But you talk about lacking in being a winning quarterback. He has a lot of bad tape at that level. Somebody will still take him high. Are we going on what the tape is and the production and the winning? Or are we going on this guy looks like he should be an NFL quarterback and how he throws the ball?”
That was meant to be a rhetorical question, but there wasn’t an obvious answer at the time. Allen didn’t win in school because Wyoming had a bad football team. He played recklessly and abandoned structure with regularity because that gave the Cowboys their best shot at winning games. If you get too hung up on results impacted by hundreds of other players and coaches, you might look right past the most important trait for a football player: talent.
Williams’s flashes of talent are so bright that seeing the substance in his game can be challenging at times. He made that observation himself during a recent appearance on The Pivot podcast. “If you go look up the stats,” he said, “I’m the most dead-center, even dude for scrambling [versus] throwing from the pocket.
“It’s just, I make more highlights, and so that’s what they show.”
Even against Notre Dame, Williams didn’t seek out the wow plays. When his first read got open, the ball came out quickly.
Williams worked deep into his progression and found open receivers when the pocket was kept clean.
Per Sports Info Solutions, seven of his 47 dropbacks against Notre Dame ended outside the pocket—either with a pass attempt, a scramble, or a sack. He was pressured on five of them; another was a designed rollout. He bailed from a clean pocket only one time. Here’s a cut-up of all those dropbacks, plus a few more borderline plays that SIS didn’t include.
I’m not seeing many easy throws left on the field. Williams turns down a short, open throw in the last clip, but that play is from the game’s final drive. USC was losing by 28. It was not the time for a checkdown.
According to Pro Football Focus, Williams scrambled from a clean pocket on just 3 percent of his dropbacks last season. Daniels was at 9.4 percent. Maye was at 6.9. Williams took only two sacks outside of the pocket last season. Maye took 12, while Daniels took six. The USC standout took a sack on just 4.4 percent of his dropbacks outside of the pocket. Daniels and Maye were both over 20 percent, per Sports Info Solutions.
Williams said he even put together a boring script of stationary throws for his pro day to highlight his pocket passing. “I did one [throw on the move] to the flat to my running back,” he told The Pivot. “After that, everything else was dropback and play-action in the pocket. It was put together for that reason. I’m not here to wow you on pro day. I’m not here to wow you on game days. I’m here to win games.”
The strategy is reminiscent of Lamar Jackson’s approach to his predraft process, when he didn’t run the 40-yard dash. The eventual two-time MVP winner later explained that he made the decision after he was asked to work out as a receiver. “I was like … ‘I don’t remember telling you guys I’d go out for receiver routes,’” Jackson said. “I’m like, ‘No, quarterback only.’ So that made me not run the 40 and participate in all the other stuff.”
The flash in Jackson’s game also occasionally overshadowed the substance he provided as a pocket passer. There were questions about his accuracy, arm strength, frame, and even his capacity to learn an NFL offense—despite excelling in Bobby Petrino’s pro-style system at Louisville. The questions got even louder after Jackson’s ugly showing in the bowl game against Mississippi State. The SEC defense picked him off four times and sacked him six times. His offensive line couldn’t hold up against a Bulldogs pass rush that featured future NFL star Montez Sweat. Louisville’s receiving corps had struggled with drops all season and had trouble hauling in passes in the wet conditions. Jackson misfired when throwing downfield and completed just 41.9 percent of his passes. And, despite all that, it was clear the Louisville QB was the best player on the field by a wide margin. He rushed for 158 yards and threw for another 171. He tossed two touchdowns and scored another on the ground after a move so quick it made me flinch when I watched it the first time.
On Jackson’s worst day, he made SEC defenders look utterly helpless. He didn’t light Mississippi State up through the air, but he did show off his comfort in the pocket on this intermediate throw.
On this play, he doesn’t let contact from a pass rusher stop him from making a perimeter throw while fading away.
This failed Hail Mary might be the most physically impressive throw he made in the game. Jackson had been pressured out of the pocket, but he was still able to get the ball all the way to the end zone to give Louisville a fighting chance.
And you didn’t have to cherry-pick Jackson’s Louisville film to find examples of him winning from the pocket. He did plenty of it during his time under Petrino. With an overmatched supporting cast going up against a tough SEC defense, a heavy dose of dropback passing was never going to work. Jackon’s talent still offered the Cardinals a chance.
These four disaster games followed a similar script: a desperate offense built entirely around its quarterback facing a more talented defense that had a game plan to stop the guy under center. Those situations revealed the worst of Mahomes, Allen, Jackson, and Williams as prospects. We can now see that those games taught us very little about the three NFL stars’ capacity to lead a franchise, but they told us something about the kind of quarterbacks they’d become at the next level. Mahomes’s reluctance to adhere to structure has been an issue during his rare cold spells. Allen’s decision-making has been such a problem that his head coach called it out at last year’s owners meeting. Jackson’s passing acumen is still questioned despite his continued success leading the Ravens offense. But there are also the positives: The shocking displays of arm strength, the darting runs, the creative throws that most other quarterbacks don’t have the imagination even to attempt—much less the ability to pull them off. Even in their darkest games, their talent shined through.
So what, then, can we learn about Williams from the Notre Dame tape? For starters, that we should stop freaking out about it. It isn’t a sign that Williams is destined to fail in Chicago. It doesn’t mean he’ll run into sacks in the pros—the numbers tell us that wasn’t an issue in college. It doesn’t mean he’s turnover-prone—he threw 14 interceptions over three seasons. If what we saw against Notre Dame was the absolute worst of Williams as a prospect, then the Bears are getting one hell of a quarterback.