Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Anthony Herron sees a comp for Caleb Williams in Sam Darnold

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

Marshall Harris and Mark Grote were joined by Score football analyst Anthony Herron to discuss the latest Bears and NFL storylines.

Rahimi Harrison Grody, Midday's Tyndall 2 on Chicago Sports Radio, 1043, The Score. First day of FM. Maybe you're catching us on 104.3 FM right now. The score. They thought they were going to get music, and then they were pleasantly surprised to get music and sports takes. You can't hear that music playing right now? That's music and sports takes. Oh, can you sing J-Rul? Which song?

Hala! What are we looking for? Whatever. Where would I be without you? That one came to that. What would I be without my baby? The none of all my break me. Well, I don't want to go crazy.

Because everybody needs to lay in. Is that? That's really what you want to write in? I needed that. Was that pleasing? Big Aunt, I needed that. Thank you. That was great.

That was pleasing to the listeners. I got exactly. Brody likes it when things are pleasing. I am very pleased. I noticed he didn't try to talk over you when you were singing that because he hates that. No, I do, but I asked for it. And you gave it to me. I like the way you sing.

I just don't all. always like it when I'm the one talking on the microphone. That's all. There is a distinction to be made right there. It shocks me how frequently it throws Speegs off. Because Speeks is accustomed to being on a stage with multiple instruments playing around him and he's carrying the lyrics and he's working the crowd and there's all that other stuff.

And sometimes when I sing next to Speegs while he's talking. But there's nobody singing in his ear while he's singing for Tributosaurus, though. Can you imagine that? Background vocals? Yeah, but there's a solo all the time? directly in his ear. It's a very, I don't know, man. It's a delicate balance. Yeah, it's a newer type of thing, really, is what I'm getting to.

You guys are wild. By the way, a couple things. Three technique. It's something, it's a newer type of situation. Something for all of us on the text line here. Grotie, I just heard the first emergency broadcast on the score, F.M. Station. It sounded glorious. So crisp. Thank you from the 773. FM Marshall is Mars Hall. Is that what they're saying?

That's it. That's what they're saying out there. And a texture for a big ant, oh yeah, the dulcet tones of Aunt Heron. I imagine, yeah, imagine you sound pretty good in FM too, man. I imagine you think you sound pretty good in FM too. I haven't been in FM since I was at. So I think this predated Ryan Porth being at the Nashville station that I used to do some appearances at when I was living down there.

But they were an FM sports talk station in Nashville. So it's been a minute since I've been in FM. But, yeah, I would imagine I sound all right in FM too. You, sir, I'm not going to disagree with that. You're adjusting very well, but I'm actually, I'm very excited just to stop you from yourself. I'm very excited to hear about a, I love quarterback comps. I love Caleb Williams comps. You have a Caleb Williams comp?

Yeah, when you look at the Super Bowl coming up this Sunday, the quarterbacks on display, the career arc of Sam Donald was expected to be more like what we've seen from Drake May, to be the guy who steps into the league, shows signs as a rookie, and then second years in that MVP sort of conversation. He has those types of physical tools. When you compare both guys are USC quarterback, Sam Donald and Caleb Williams, when you compare their highlights from college, the Sam Donald highlights are eerily similar to what Caleb Williams looked like

for much of his run at USC and the Hidesman Trophy season. Sam Donald, when I called his games for the Pact 12 network at USC, it called a bunch of his games in college. I described him as an improvisational wizard, where when the play would break down, and he didn't always have a great offensive line in front of him, so the play would frequently break down, or Sam just liked holding the football.

So the play would break down because he just wouldn't cut it loose. But then as he began to run around and improvise, sometimes even the ball would, like, dribble out of his hand, and he'd pick it up and keep running and scrambling to and, pro-Fran Tarkinson style, but then frequently it would end up in these amazing plays that he would make during his college career. The arm strength was there, and beyond the arm strength, the arm talent was showcased as well for a guy who had the arm strength to hit every blade of grass on the field. But also, he could layer his passes. He could turn the nose of the football over in a really rapid manner to get it beyond the linebacker in front of the secondary.

And that was why I thought the physical gifts, that whole draft. class that came out because when you think about it, like top to bottom where you throw Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson into that class that began with Baker Mayfield and Josh Rosen in that mix as well, a bunch of first round QBs. But Sam Donald was the one who was the most total package with the skills that he brought to the table because his arm didn't have the horsepower of Josh Allen, but he was also super mobile and he did have a really strong arm, but he could pass with more nuance, more touch, more focus to how the football is being delivered, throwing receivers open.

And he and Caleb are really evenly yoked in that manner. Caleb has always protected the football at a higher level than Sam Donald, though. So that's why Sam Donald wasn't number one, why he was number three, a bunch of turnovers in college, and why his NFL career got off to a slow start, part of it, being with the Jets. But then getting to the point where he could balance that playmaking ability with more of the mundane aspects of just being a precise and consistent quarterback snap in and snap out. And once he did get around Kyle Shanahan and some of these offensive on Kevin O'Connell,

and now this situation he has right now that he's in with Clint Kubiak, he's been in offensive systems that take some of that load off of him, and he's just had an opportunity to evaluate more football because he was also a three-and-done guy who only started for two years in college and then came to the National Football League So he's been in the league since 2018, but he's only 28 years old. So there's a lot of similarities between Sam Donald and Caleb Williams, and Caleb is already on a much faster track to his excellence than where we saw Sam Donald early in his career.

And Donald is a guy who still, I don't believe, has reached his ceiling and has already led a team to an appearance in the Super Bowl. All I heard is you're taking the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. That's all I heard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But not only because of Sam Donald.

I think Drake May is going to play much better in the Super Bowl than he has, even though Seahawks are an incredible defense. But Drake May has a lot of those playmaking capabilities also. I just don't see him having four consecutive bad games, and they've got to find a way to run the football more effectively. Trayvon Henderson didn't get the rock in the AFC championship game. So in a similar fashion where Seattle's offense takes some of the load off Sam Darnold, New England's offense has got to find a way to do that as well

and just allow Drake May to find some chunk plays. So I think Drake May is going to play pretty well. that stage in the Super Bowl. Seahawks are just a better overall team. Yeah, no doubt. I agree with you. I have not made a pick as of yet, but we shall... I mean, I can you not lean towards Seattle at this point.

I mean, they just are the better team. I can't rule out the Patriots at this point. But as for Caleb Williams making that count there, what is reasonable to expect him to improve upon this year that wasn't? may be perfect last year. It's the earlier starts for me. The earlier start to the regular season. You would hope there would be more of a jumping off point in just having this offensive

system down, having four of his five starters returning on the old line. And so to get off to a faster start early in the year, not just as a playmaker, because he made plenty of chunk plays early in the season last year. But we got into the month of December before we saw Caleb really executing the snap-by-snap of quarterback play at a high-level. level and throwing more consistently with anticipation. Throwing catchable passes. That's the wildest thing about this past season with Caleb.

The good weather games earlier in the year were when he's throwing these rockets that can barely be caught, even when they're accurate. You got to 30 and 40 mile an hour winds. You got to below zero temperatures. That's when we saw a version of Caleb that took some revolutions per minute off the football that was able to throw it in a way that had more touch, more anticipation to it. So I'd love to see him start there, and I believe he will start there earlier in the season next year. And I actually had a buddy of mine who sent me one of the clips from Instagram where you were asking me about Caleb's accuracy improving by the end of the season, Marshall.

I said it's going to really be hard during the regular season for that to show up. I was really impressed because between that conversation we had in early December and the end of the regular season, his accuracy honestly did improve a lot more in that final month plus that I even thought it would. Now he's got an offseason to really get into the mechanics of playing quarterback within Ben Johnson's offense. It's not just about getting the playbook down rope memory style. He can combine knowing this offense with footwork and timing and that getting the information from his brain out through his right arm in a really sort of smooth manner as opposed to having to catch up to the play like he did for much of the season last year. I did want to ask you, do you feel like we're in this post-Runi rule? world when you look at the fact that there were 10 head coach jobs open and the results are in and it's not Rooney Rule favorable.

I wonder if they're going to scrap it, if they're going to try to do something different because the path to head coach, as we talked about, and you obviously believe in defensive head coaches can be a thing. Yes, they can be a thing. But do you feel like they're going to have to do something different to encourage these organizations to give minorities a chance? I love what Maryland head coach, and he's from the DMV, but he was a former Alinae offensive coordinator, Mike Loxley.

He back during, like, in 2020, when everybody was just kind of out of work and sitting around and trying to figure out what to do next, basically, Mike Loxley started a minority coaches coalition to try and attack the issue that you're raising here where there's not enough black coaches who are getting opportunities as offensive play callers, as OCs and offensive play callers,

as quarterback coaches. because that has more frequently become the path to becoming a head coach in modern football. So the volume of those opportunities, it doesn't feel like are there as much. And so to attack that to make sure that the coffers are as full as they can be, but Mike Oxley was a DB, but he's become thought of as this offensive wizard in college football. Kevin Sumlin, a guy who's on his Maryland staff, was similar in that way, played defense but became this offensive-minded guy as a college head coach. but for black coaches,

there's not as many quarterback coaches, offensive coordinators, offensive play callers, even when they are OCs. And that tends to be where teams want to pluck those opportunities from. And in the end,

just like we're talking about Declan Doyle, he's 29 years old or maybe just became 30 or whatever. And so he's at a space in his career where he was comfortable, passing up on an opportunity from the Eagles, and then another one just came right away. For black coaches, there still is,

for a lot of them not to communicate with, still that hesitation to, if I don't tell, take this is another one going to come? How many of these bites at the apple am I truly going to get? Because you want those interviews, that opportunity to be there to impress folks and just have that opportunity to at least be in the system for them, to be within if some old owner's got a little black book.

All right, let me be in that guy's black book so he knows I'm an option for him. But if there's not the frequency of candidates available, then that's where you've got to have more fertile ground where coaches are being developed into offensive play callers because that's where a lot of the jobs are going. You always make sense somehow, somehow, even though you rip Marshall. I disagree with him on the point I made, and it's okay, he has his opinion. I have my, we'll see how it plays out.

Defensive coaches versus offensive coaches. You can be a defensive coach. I'm just saying, as he just pointed out, the path to a head coaching job is much easier through the offensive coordinator lane. So if you have an offensive mind of head coach, you don't have to worry about turning over your head coach every year if you are a winning organization, quote-unquote, like the Philadelphia Eagles, who I do not do. think are going to be headed to anyone's Super Bowl next year.

I will believe the Eagles are going to be bad when I see it. It's certainly possible. I don't think they're going to be bad. If they're nine and eight, Syriani's gone, right? And they don't make the playoffs or they don't advance in the playoffs. And he should because he will have enough talent on the field that you could say most Sundays they've got more talent than the other team. Big Ant, you're awesome.

You're welcome to hang out with us for halftown. We're just going to be talking about the Grammys, man. If you want to, I know you're a music guy. You know what? Yes. If you don't want to. Our feelings won't be hurt, but we'd love to have. Maybe I'll leave like halfway through the segment.

That's fine. Whatever. You do whatever you want to do. No. You're not, you know, Grody. Not on FM Day. Not on FM Day. You're right.

It is FM Day. There was a, there was one of those Grammy moments last night and some good moments, too. I always love the Grammys. I love the Grammy moment. And there was a good moment. There was a good moments. You know what I'm saying. There's been Grammy moments through the years.

We know all about them. We'll talk about it next on Rahimi Harris and Grotie on 104. on 1043 the score.