Is QB Caleb Williams in the god tier of prospects?

[DoleINGout]

30 minutes ago, MaddHatter said:

Yes, it certainly is when you consider he was barely ever a top 5 QB in his own Era.  He’s as much a HOFer as Eli Manning perhaps, but certainly not a lock nor a first ballot guy and definitely not Top 20 All-Time

Hard to argue opinions but statistically Wilson’s output over a ten year period is elite historically and if someone like Staubach or Young are argued for being top 20 all time despite playing short careers then Wilson is in the conversation too in my opinion.

[MaddHatter]

12 minutes ago, DoleINGout said:

Hard to argue opinions but statistically Wilson’s output over a ten year period is elite historically and if someone like Staubach or Young are argued for being top 20 all time despite playing short careers then Wilson is in the conversation too in my opinion.

Not to derail this thread, but interesting discussion so I posted it in the Comp forum.  Hope you’ll make your case and engage in discussion there

[Tugboat]

6 hours ago, AZ_Eaglesfan said:

He needs a coach that is going to teach him how to play football properly. He is insanely talented. His mix of arm talent and leg talent is unicorn level. His weakness of course is he has not consistently played from the pocket how an NFL QB needs to. But it isn't like he can't learn how to do that.

He is clearly the best prospect in this draft imo. He is not an overly safe pick, but his ceiling is absolutely absurd if you can develop him.

The Russell Wilson comparison is awful to me. His physical talent is through the roof. Russell had tools, but nothing like what Caleb has.

 

"He just needs a coach to teach him how to football" doesn't sound like a "god tier" prospect imo.

[MagicMT]

9 hours ago, DoleINGout said:

maybe maybe not. Wilson was overlooked but do you think Caleb Williams is going to have a comparable or even way better career than Wilson? A future HOF lock and arguably a top 20 QB of all time? 

Well this is revisionist history as I was talking about prospects and in that regard Caleb is absolutely better than Wilson was (3rd round pick, deemed too short, not a sure thing). If anything Caleb is a rich man's Russell Wilson IMO. Plus, not sure Wilson is HOF lock and surely not a top 20 QB all-time come on now. The passing game has elvoved so much that having better stats than 70-80-90s players is not enough to be put in the Hall. But personally I think Caleb Williams will be a better NFL player than Russell Wilson, yes. I know that's a relatively high bar to clear but that's how highly I think of him as a prospect. Let's agree to disagree on him, we'll see in a couple of years how he fares! 

[PossibleCabbage]

I think that the answer to the question posed by the OP is "Emphatically, no." He's a tools guy, who has played well, but his process is all kinds of messed up since a lot of what he did at USC was "Caleb, go out and make a play" which is something he did pretty reliably.  So he's probably a better prospect than Josh Allen (the prospect) but not by much.

[DoleINGout]

On 2/3/2024 at 1:15 PM, PossibleCabbage said:

So he's probably a better prospect than Josh Allen (the prospect) but not by much.

not even close, Allen was and still is a generational talent/prospect

Edited February 4 by DoleINGout

[PossibleCabbage]

33 minutes ago, DoleINGout said:

not even close, Allen was and still is a generational talent/prospect

Allen was a very bad college football player with truly elite traits.  Caleb was a very successful college football player with high end traits.

It's not just "Josh Allen didn't have talent around him at Wyoming" it was "he literally didn't have a plan if his first read wasn't open".

[DoleINGout]

13 minutes ago, PossibleCabbage said:

Allen was a very bad college football player with truly elite traits.  Caleb was a very successful college football player with high end traits.

It's not just "Josh Allen didn't have talent around him at Wyoming" it was "he literally didn't have a plan if his first read wasn't open".

i remember allen as a prospect with a ~54% completion percentage running around and tossing bombs. I saw immediately the insane talent he had like others did and I latched onto him as a prospect. Caleb Williams i dont see the traits or his NFL prospects measuring up to the USC stats and accolades whatsoever. Far less impressive but that is just me.

[Tugboat]

14 hours ago, DoleINGout said:

i remember allen as a prospect with a ~54% completion percentage running around and tossing bombs. I saw immediately the insane talent he had like others did and I latched onto him as a prospect. Caleb Williams i dont see the traits or his NFL prospects measuring up to the USC stats and accolades whatsoever. Far less impressive but that is just me.

 

Yeah.  This was the thing with Josh Allen as a prospect.  He was wildly polarizing.  I don't think it's fair to say he was a "bad college football player".  He was just in a bizarre situation.  It can be so difficult to really gauge QB play in Mountain West because the talent disparity and inconsistencies can get so wild.  But the elite physical traits were clear and it was really more just a guy being put in a situation that wasn't very statistically flattering, than a truly "bad quarterback".  But that's where you had a wide schism between the believers who generally had him as the Top-QB in the class...and the stats guys who thought he was absolutely an worthless "bad football player" not even worth a 1st rounder.  Jordan Love was a bit of the same...and jury is still out on that, but promising signs.  His arm talent really stood out, but he caught an awful lot of flak for his numbers against "weak competition".

 

Caleb Williams isn't nearly as controversial or polarizing a QB prospect.  He's got some real questionmarks.  But they're not in the productivity and numbers really.  They're in the realm of systems play, winning from the pocket, winning and being a leader in general, etc.  In a lot of ways, he's almost a bit like a mash-up of some of the concerns around Mayfield+Rosen from that same Allen draft, all smooshed together in a guy who came into this whole process with a heck of a lot more hype.

But his productivity and numbers make him feel a lot "safer" to most people.  It's hard not to see him finding at least some level of NFL success.  The projection is less of a leap of faith from the conference he played in, the production, and the talent he played with/against.

[JaguarCrazy2832]

16 hours ago, DoleINGout said:

not even close, Allen was and still is a generational talent/prospect

Disagree, he was far from generational. He was the classic rocket arm QB with no accuracy 

[Daniel]

1 hour ago, JaguarCrazy2832 said:

Disagree, he was far from generational. He was the classic rocket arm QB with no accuracy 

Yeah, Allen has turned into a great player, but he was the prototype of a bust QB. Pre-Allen, the rule of thumb was you cannot coach up a QB who doesn’t throw accurately.

They’ve always been boom or bust, and Allen is the one that finally boomed.

[goldfishwars]

18 hours ago, DoleINGout said:

not even close, Allen was and still is a generational talent/prospect

He was one of the most maligned quarterback prospects in memory

[PossibleCabbage]

I think it's easy to mistakenly view what happened with Allen as "he was a good player in a bad situation in college which corrected itself when he got to the NFL".  Since Allen was also pretty dire as a QB in his first year in Buffalo, but all credit to the kid he put in the work and god a whole lot better which is a thing that very rarely happens with QBs where the primary case for them is "traits."  If all high end QB prospects also had Josh Allen's work ethic, you'd get a lot fewer busts and this is something you absolutely could not determine by watching tape (and even media reports might be misleading since people sometimes have different interior lives than public ones.)

It's not weird when a bad QB becomes a good QB- pick any QB you think is good and that guy probably hasn't been good at playing quarterback for his entire life.  It's just weird that the swtich flipped for Allen after he was in the NFL, since that rarely happens.

Edited February 5 by PossibleCabbage

[Tugboat]

4 hours ago, Daniel said:

Yeah, Allen has turned into a great player, but he was the prototype of a bust QB. Pre-Allen, the rule of thumb was you cannot coach up a QB who doesn’t throw accurately.

They’ve always been boom or bust, and Allen is the one that finally boomed.

 

The thing with Allen was, his "accuracy" was statistically horrific.  But if you actually watched the process of how he got there, it wasn't really so bad at all.  It wasn't like he was just throwing the ball off to nowhere all the time.  It was just...a useless situation.  You could see where, with an NFL caliber receiver with an actual catch radius and strong hands...that's a strike.  That's where the divide showed up.  He got pigeonholed by some as a "hipster scouting" fad because people looked at his numbers and perused a few highlights or whatever, and thought, "this guy must suck and just throw a few good passes that have everyone mesmerized".

 

But the talent was so abundantly clear if you really stopped and watched snap after snap of the guy.  He was truly on an island.  And still managed to make plays.

 

It was always clear that he'd be more toward the "gunslinger" end of the spectrum if he panned out.  And that's where he's fallen on the scale today.  

But we've seen multiple "boom/bust" QBs boom now.  Allen isn't the only one.  The College and NFL landscape are both completely changing.

 

9 minutes ago, PossibleCabbage said:

I think it's easy to mistakenly view what happened with Allen as "he was a good player in a bad situation in college which corrected itself when he got to the NFL".  Since Allen was also pretty dire as a QB in his first year in Buffalo, but all credit to the kid he put in the work and god a whole lot better which is a thing that very rarely happens with QBs where the primary case for them is "traits."  If all high end QB prospects also had Josh Allen's work ethic, you'd get a lot fewer busts and this is something you absolutely could not determine by watching tape (and even media reports might be misleading since people sometimes have different interior lives than public ones.)

 

I think trying to attribute Allen's success to "working hard" is almost downright offensive to the obvious natural talent he came into the process with.  Yes, that work ethic and leadership ability and just generally being "That Guy" is critical to NFL success.  It's why Caleb Williams is being questioned in the first place.  Because he very much might not be "That Guy".  But Allen wasn't just some awful football player who worked real hard and turned into the second best Quarterback in the league because he tried real hard.  He has insane natural talents and he showed all of that extensively in College.  He just didn't have anyone around him capable of playing on remotely the same level at Wyoming.  And that was the argument that was rehashed over and over and over again by his defenders (like me) at the time.  The fact it took him a year to adjust from the ******* Mountain West Conference to NFL level is like...durrrrrrrrr.  That's an absolutely insane jump in every single respect.  It took a second?  No way!!!

 

But it does raise the real questions with Caleb Williams.  How much does he want it?  How hard will he really work?  How special are his tools actually?  Can he be a true leader of men that rallies them toward a cause?

[BetterCallSaul]

22 hours ago, DoleINGout said:

not even close, Allen was and still is a generational talent/prospect

He was not a generational prospect. He was not even considered top 3 QB in his own draft class. Let's not get crazy.

22 hours ago, PossibleCabbage said:

Allen was a very bad college football player with truly elite traits.  Caleb was a very successful college football player with high end traits.

It's not just "Josh Allen didn't have talent around him at Wyoming" it was "he literally didn't have a plan if his first read wasn't open".

This isn't true either. Josh Allen was a good football player in college. Please find me a collegiate tape of his that paints him as this horrible QB. He played in a pro style run-heavy offense where they asked him to chuck moon balls off of play action as his primary form of production. He played in an unfriendly offense. The talent was clearly there. Yeah he was a bit wild with his accuracy, but he was under an insane amount of pressure and was throwing to absolute bums. His RB was solid, but the rest of that Wyoming team was dreadful. It absolutely factored into his low completion percentage, as did their scheme.

 

I feel that I'm on the right side of Josh Allen history. I really liked him as a prospect, although I did think Baker and Darnold were better prospects. I thought all three were going to be good and refuted the "Josh Allen sucks" crowd, which was extensive. People love to disqualify players and ignore context.