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<\/a><\/p>\nThere are some moderate \u201csuccess stories\u201d in that bunch, like Joe Flacco and eventually Darnold. There\u2019s also Brandon Weeden and Grossman. The last QB to complete under 58% of his passes on a minimum of 300 attempts? Zach Wilson in 2021.<\/p>\n
And if you allow yourself to be the type of person who asks \u201cWhat if?\u201d then what if you gave Wilson the 2025 Chicago Bears with Ben Johnson? He might not be good. He might not be able to keep the job. But would he have been a lot better than being stuck with the Jets?<\/p>\n
It stands to reason that most quarterbacks would be better in this situation.<\/p>\n
Which leads into the next question: If the Bears make a QB better, and Caleb is by some measures not one of the top-30 starters in the league, how bad would Caleb Williams look on the Jets?<\/p>\n
He has a completion rate of 58% even though he plays in an era where the league and the coaches have made it easier than ever to complete over 65% of your passes. That means that Caleb has an adjusted completion number of 74 (a 100 would be average) and that ranks as a tie for the 24th-worst season by a QB since at least 1968.<\/p>\n
Now you may say to yourself, \u201cBut wait! Matthew Stafford had a 74 in 2009 with the Lions!\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s actually true. Stafford only completed 53.3% of his passes in 2009. He was also a rookie. He was also 21 years old. Caleb is 24. Stafford was an extremely raw quarterback at the time. How raw is a QB allowed to be in his second NFL season, after three starting years in college? Is he allowed to be this inaccurate when you know for a fact that quarterbacks like Drake Maye still do exist?<\/p>\n
At this rate, his career is starting to look a little bit like the start of Kyler Murray\u2019s career or Baker Mayfield\u2019s career. A rough but promising start. A lot of talent clear on the film. They start to win games in year 2 and 3. The media crowns him as the next-great-thing at the position\u2026but what happened with Murray and Mayfield after that? Is the Lincoln Riley connection between all three merely a coincidence?<\/p>\n
And by the way, nobody is arguing that Caleb Williams IS a bust or that he couldn\u2019t become a quarterback who is ACTUALLY GOOD in the future.<\/p>\n
This is simply about the quarterback who the Rams will face on Sunday in the divisional round of the playoffs, not the quarterback who Williams could become in 2026 or 2027 or 2028:<\/p>\n
This Caleb Williams was easily one of the worst passers in the league on short (under 10 air yards) and intermediate (11-19 yards) throws, ranking bottom-2 in accuracy in both categories.<\/p>\n
This Williams had the worst passing stats of any quarterback in the wild card round, win or lose.<\/p>\n
This Williams is so talented that he can make just one play\u2026that makes the world somehow forget about the other 47. (24 incompletions in a playoff game is the most in three years, which was 45-year-old Tom Brady (in his final game) and Skylar Thompson)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fascinating to watch the Bears win games that they almost lost, especially so many close games in one season. But there\u2019s an aspect to that combination that gets lost when people talk about a former number one pick as talented as Caleb Williams:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026they almost lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
The one-score win teams always win a lot of games. They also almost always lose in the playoffs before the Super Bowl because even though game-changers are far more exciting to watch in the two-minute drills, sometimes all you want is a quarterback who knows how to manage the other 58.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can a number one pick take his team to the Super Bowl and still be considered a bust?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2079],"tags":[7,1014,58,83993,2444,2611,6,424],"class_list":{"0":"post-672962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-rams","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-los-angeles","10":"tag-los-angeles-rams","11":"tag-los-angeles-rams-playoffs","12":"tag-losangeles","13":"tag-losangelesrams","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-rams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115885537198510218","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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