October Mailbag: On the '24 QB class, Matt LaFleur, Eagles malaise, MVP race, trick plays, Chiefs outlook, Flacco
Subscriber questions answered. There's a lot to get into.
Good morning! I’m en route to Lions Country where it’s always a must to check in on Dan Campbell’s crew.
First, your mailbag questions.
Excellent submissions by all.
Let’s get to it…
Tyler:
Williams, Daniels, Maye, Penix, and Nix — five starting QBs were drafted in the top 12 picks of the 2024 draft. All of them are starting. It seems like rich fodder for considering how well scouts, teams, and miscellaneous purported experts did at ranking those QBs and assigning them a draft value. At the time, Williams was seemingly considered the clear number 1 pick. As Poles said, the media would kill him if he didn’t draft Williams.
Questions:
How do these QBs rank now? If we had a do-over today, would Williams still go first? If not, where would he go?
If Caleb was overrated, why was he so overrated?
If he was overrated because nobody considered his processing speed, are there indications in his college tape that he was slow? Are there indications on Drake Maye’s tape that he was smart? Did some of these guys do a better job of running their college offenses? If so, were they given credit for that?
Was Caleb overrated because the NFL has become too obsessed with traits? And why is the NFL obsessed with traits when arguably the best QB in NFL history had zero traits? Isn’t Anthony Richardson the anti-Tom Brady?
Was Caleb overrated because what he was doing in college, holding the ball for 5 or 6 seconds, doesn’t translate to the NFL? If so, was that factor given appropriate consideration by the Caleb hype machine?
While Penix was dinged pre-draft for being old, shouldn’t the opposite conclusion have been reached, i.e., he had a lot of snaps under his belt?
Has Bo Nix outperformed expectations? If so, why? And was that an error on the part of analysts? Or did Nix get lucky in being drafted by the Broncos?
— Jim T
A doozy. Thanks, Jim. Hard to think of anything in the NFL more compelling than the 2024 quarterback class. This group of six quarterbacks will author the course of their respective franchises — for better or worse. Let’s include Minnesota’s J.J. McCarthy, too. It’s Year 2. So there’s ample time for all of the above to either ascend or descend. Hell, look at what Baker Mayfield’s doing with his fourth team and Sam Darnold with his fifth team.
Through our three-parter on the Chicago Bears, I tried to drive home the very real possibility that Ben Johnson can maximize Caleb Williams. The team’s new head coach is so brilliant, so maniacal that even members of the previous coaching staff — who witnessed the worst of Williams — admit Johnson could resurrect this USC quarterback. We’ve seen flashes through Chicago’s clunky 2-2 start. Johnson will scheme open receivers, and it’s on Williams to hit those receivers with rhythm and timing. Of course, this brand of quarterbacking is foreign to Williams. Under Lincoln Riley, he didn’t need to mentally process the field at a deeper level with the full license to zig and zag and improvise and use his special traits in creative ways all over the field.
That is what Ryan Poles fell in love with. That is what reminded the Bears GM of Patrick Mahomes. But this style also is not sustainable.
There’s only one Mahomes and Mahomes also has Andy Reid pushing the buttons. The no-look passes and impossible escapes earn the RT’s and millions of YouTube views, but the Chiefs quarterback is at his best decimating defenses from structure.
From what I’ve gathered since publishing our series, Johnson knew what he was getting into upon taking the Bears job.