The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Looking backward and forward for this season's second-year quarterbacks

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

The 2024 rookie quarterback class was a big story from the moment that it put six players in the first round of the draft. The group had about as diverse a range of rookie season experiences as possible, from J.J. McCarthy missing the season due to injury, to Jayden Daniels leading the Commanders to the NFC Championship Game. What was 2024 really like for the five guys who played? And what are realistic expectations for all of them (other than McCarthy) going forward. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen give their diagnosis on the former, and prognosis on the latter, on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Hosts: Robert Mays and Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...⁠Apple⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠YouTube⁠Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Really enjoyed today's show. We've been dancing around this one a little bit, kind of hinting at the fact that we were going to do it. We dug into the second year quarterbacks today. Talked about all five guys who were drafted in the first round last year and actually played in the regular season.

So no J.J. McCarthy here. Sorry, Vikings fans. And just tried to contextualize what their rookie seasons were for real. Like when you go back and you watch the film, when you look at the stats, we're a little bit removed from it. What were these guys as rookies? And based on that, what can we expect from them moving forward?

Based on what we saw from them as rookies and some of the changes in their situations heading into year two. I really enjoyed talking to Derek Lawson about all of these guys. I feel like many of them were better than we expected. There's just so much collective excitement about this group. And after going back and really studying it, I think a lot of that excitement is justified. I mean, that obviously applies to Jaden Daniels. but Drake May did so many good things as a rookie. I was so impressed by so many things that Michael Penix did

going back and watching those three games today. Bo Nix was an incredible story last year and what he did in the second half of the season compared to the first half of the season. And then we'll talk about Caleb Williams as well, but even in a year that was gross and disappointing in so many different ways for that Chicago offense, I still think there were enough flashes from Caleb Williams

to get a little bit excited about what he could potentially look like with Ben Jones. Johnson. So we talked about all of these guys at length today with me and Derek. Let's get to that conversation about the second year quarterbacks right now. All right. We've been circling this one for a couple weeks. I think I've offhandedly mentioned it a couple of times that we were going to do it. We ignored a lot of these players in the lingering question shows because we knew you and I that this was coming. We are digging into the second year quarterbacks today. We're allowed to do this a little bit earlier for the 2025 off season because you work here. We had to wait last year because

it was the first show that you did when we met up right before a training camp. So I'm glad we'd get this in a little bit sooner this year because you're in the fold. Yeah, we're getting in it way soon. Yeah, last year I had to, it was when I went down to meet you at Chargers Camp, which was, I mean, that would be like a month from now. So we're definitely getting ahead of it. But it is fun to now be, you know, full circle. It's been 11 months, not a full year. But it's fun to be full circle and doing the same show I started with. And also, this class is just going to be really fun to dig into. Obviously, we have five guys to talk about. We're not going to discuss J.J. McCarthy today because what would we discuss? Jay J.J. McCarthy didn't play football last year?

I'm not talking about one preseason game from last year on June 26th. It's not happening. No. I don't think that's necessary because there's plenty to dig into with all these other guys. Even Michael Pennock's three games, there's still a lot for us to talk about. So we're going to run through all the second year quarterbacks today. We're going to talk about what their rookie seasons actually were like as we go back and study them now a little bit removed from the day to day rigors of the schedule and get a little bit of perspective by taking a step back and then we're going to turn it forward a little bit and talk about what some reasonable expectations might be for these guys heading into year two so let's just do this in the order that these guys were drafted and

let's start with Caleb Williams as you went back and studied Caleb Williams's rookie season what were we looking at actually from the guy taking number one overall last year I mean, I think in terms of how the situation like functionally played out, he might have been playing in the worst situation of any of these guys. Obviously, the Patriots roster was worse and their offensive line was also pretty bad. But I actually felt like structurally they were doing some things fairly well. Whereas obviously with Chicago, that was never going to be the case. And then we, when I watched Caleb Williams, and we've talked about this before, right,

he to me felt like a player who coming out of college was the backyard. I'm going to run around. I'm going to play the game that I want, the way that I want to play the game, the way that I know I'm the best player on the field, this is how I have to play to win the game. He got to the NFL and I think did a lot more of, I'm trying to win from the pocket, I'm trying to get through my progressions as fast as possible, I'm trying to do all this stuff. And I think what you saw is that in a lot of cases, he either ended up anchoring himself to the pocket for too long and just standing there, waiting for a dig route to come open that was

never going to come open, or he would just absolutely speed run through his progressions, one, two, three, checkdown. And it's like, we need to find the balance here. And I think he just struggled with that for a lot of the season. And that, to me, is where you saw a lot of the inconsistency come in. You have these situations every once in a while. The Jared Gough Rams reminds me of this Trevor Lawrence in year one with the Jags, where there's just no shot.

Like, you're just going to drown in whatever is happening to you. And that makes it really difficult to try to contextualize what happened and project it moving forward. When you go back and you watch, and I went back to watch the last three games of the season, and then some scattered moments from earlier in the year this morning. And you watch even games where he played well in the back half of the season, like that second Lions game. And you're watching a player that is just lost. And it's up to us to try to figure out how much of that is what he's being asked to do

and how much of that is his own personal deficiencies. I don't know what my answer is to that. But like you're talking about where he doesn't really know what he should be doing on any given play. And to me, the biggest difference between watching him and college, and watching him in the league. And this is one of those kind of intangible things that is really important to quarterback play, but it's hard to figure out how guys lose it, how guys get it back.

He looked like a player that had zero confidence, zero. And to compare that to the player that we watched in college, I think that was part of just how starkly different the Caleb Williams as a prospect felt and Caleb Williams as an NFL quarterback felt. It was frustrating. And that's why that's why he was inconsistent. Like you still saw some of the really good moments, right? Like there are moments where his process, I think, is really good.

Even in that second Lions game, I complained about him a lot as a quick game pastor, but there are a couple moments in that game where he actually does a really good job of like working through the flat progression and coming back to throw the over the ball route on like a spacing concept, stuff. Or there's a play in that game where he rips one to Keenan Allen down the scene where he's like his pocket movement is fantastic. He slides up, eyes up, all that stuff. So he, there are certain fundamentals to his game that are good. but because of the confidence thing that you're talking about. And again, we mentioned the coaching issue and how well I think he was being taught some of this stuff.

The inconsistency was always just, it felt like he more than the other quarterbacks. I think when you watch Drake May, when you watch Jane Daniels, when you watch Bo Nix, there is a confidence in knowing what plan B is on a given play. Caleb just never had that. And he was still talented enough to do something sometimes. But it just never felt like he was confident in what the next thing was. And we've talked about this a lot and the importance of that dialogue between the architect of your offense and your play caller and your quarterback and articulating to your quarterback.

This is what the plan is. This is what we're trying to accomplish on this play. Option A, option B, option C. And I think you just never saw that. And so if you're trying to spin this optimistically and you're trying to talk yourself into how this can turn around and go well, we're going from one of the worst situations. And again, you're speculating, but it seems like one of the worst situations when it comes to that sort of idea to a play caller who created one of the best possible situations when it

comes to that idea. And the hope is when you take him from the first one to the second one, we're going to see real tangible growth and improvement. Maybe that doesn't happen, but I think it's easy to make a case for why when given an actual chance to succeed, we're going to see a different sort of player this year. But I'm not absolving him of all blame here, by the way. There's a lot of stuff that we have to dig into. No, it doesn't necessarily absolve him of blame.

it does make more sense of why he was playing the way that I think that he was playing. Whereas like his learning process had to be like, I'm going to go out there and do shit at a speed that I'm not sure if that is correct, but I'm going to do it and we're going to see if it works. I feel like, you know, you watch Bo Nicks and his progression in Sean Payton's offense. It all felt so like it came all at the right pace and at a very steady pace because I mean, Sean Payton is one of the best offensive play callers and offensive minds in the league. And I think you saw that progress that way.

with Caleb Williams, you just didn't get a whole lot of that. It's difficult to untangle all of this stuff. There are two, one stat-based thing and one film-based thing that I think expresses how difficult it is and how hard it is to figure out what's on him and what's on the situation. He took eight extended sacks on the season per next gen. I think that's like, I don't know, five-ish seconds. I can't remember exactly what the cutoff is, but they have an extended stat or extended stacks stack.

He took eight. Drake May took four, just for context. Like eight was by far the most in the league. that's on the quarterback. The quarterback is responsible for those sorts of plays. He also led the league in unblocked sacks and unblocked pressures. So you look at that and you're like, okay, what am I supposed to do with that? Because it's coming from multiple directions. And then there was a sequence in the Packer game that I think is just such a good indication of what we're dealing with here.

He has, it's a play action concept and there's a big crosser from DJ Moore and then Keenan Allen is running an in-breaker behind it. And Keenan Allen is open in that second window and he does. just turns it down. It's there and he just turns it down. Okay, that's on him. That's a play that you should make within the rhythm of the concept and the construction of the play. The next play, it's third and six. They're in a six-man protection against a five-o look that the Packers have with one of the linebackers walked down. They let a free runner off the left side, even though they have six blockers against five guys. And then the center, the right guard, and the back don't block anybody. So this is a two-play sequence. And so the first one,

it's 100% on the quarterback. He has to make that throw. The second one, he has nothing to do with what's going on here. And that's what makes it so difficult to properly contextualize what Caleb Williams's rookie season was because no matter what angle you're looking at this from, some of it is on him and some of it is on the situation. And that's never going to change no matter how you try to spin this. And that's where the slippery slope with this stuff can kind of come in is like you can tell yourself that because there were so many of the bad plays, that even on the clean plays, he isn't going to play necessarily the right way because he just feels like something's going to go wrong.

And we've seen this, like these vacillations with quarterback performance year to year because certain guys do this. Like Derek Carr has been this way for a lot of his career. Whereas like when there were years where he felt like he was going to get pressured more, he just doesn't play as well, even on the clean plays. But on years where he feels like he's going to get protected really well, he actually plays even better on the plays where he's getting hit because he just, there's an overall confidence to his game.

And I think we saw that a little bit with Caleb Williams last year. But even that film example was really instructive with him, specifically with turning down the dig route, like for as many things as I think Caleb Williams still does really well. I think some of the things that he's always going to struggle with are seeing and throwing the middle of the field the way that some of the elite quarterbacks do. That was true coming out of college. And then the extended sacks. Like him getting the unblocked pressure, that's just like, that's a scheme thing. That's the offensive line, all that stuff.

But those, him taking eight extended sacks, you know, it's probably not going to be eight every year. But it'll probably be at least four or five every year where he's making one sack a month at least that's just going to, hiss you off as a Bears fan. And I wonder how much that's true in an offense where Ben Johnson is, again, articulating all the stuff to him in the right way, articulating where your options are and where your outlets are. I think that's what was so obvious about Jared Goff and this version of Jared Goff is that he understood where his outlets were all the time.

And that's not something you could always say about Jared Goff. So I do think that is something you can get better at in an offense like this. I think the sack problem is probably always going to be. to an extent, but I do think the chains and situation can help it at least a little bit. The sack thing is it's one of the biggest issues, but it's not the only issue. Like there are other things about what he was as a player last year that I do think are a little bit of a cause for concern. The deep passing for the first half of the season was like historically bad. It was really, really, really bad.

And again, I think it goes back to a confidence thing. When you watch him throwing the ball on those plays, he has zero. confidence that they're going to be completed. Like, they are truly just prayers every single time. And they threw a million of them. Nobody threw down the field more than Caleb Williams. So he's being asked one way or another to do it more than anyone in the league. And also he sucks at it.

And so when you continue to suck at it, it's like, how is he supposed to get more confidence in it? I think that the back half of the year, though, was much better. If you look at some of those deep throws in the back half of the season, it went from being historically abysmal to just the worst in the league by a little little bit. And that may seem like a lot of coping, but that's a huge improvement from what it was at the beginning of the year. So I think pushing the ball downfield at all was a concern because of just the lack of confidence he had some of the ways that they deployed some of the receivers. One of my favorite plays that I rewatched this morning, there was, I think it was against the Lions,

that second Lions game. They're running a dagger concept with DJ Moore as the number one receiver on the right running that big inbreaker. And then the clear out route from the number two was run by Keenan Allen and Keenan Allen almost didn't get vertical enough to clear it out like DJ Moore and him were running at the exact same pace and DJ Moore almost ran into him on the clear out. Dude, that was one of my biggest experience. I feel like I had this experience every time I go back and watch the Bears is at some point by the second or third quarter, I'm like, why is Keenan Allen down the field as much as he is? It makes absolutely no sense.

The guys, which guys were on which routes absolutely never made sense. and I think that gets back to the structure of it all as well. But so the down-the-field stuff was always bad. But even let's just take away the down-the-field options. A stat I looked up because if you look at his overall numbers for the season, he was 31st among 36 qualified quarterbacks and EPA per dropback. He was 35th in success rate. This was an abjectly bad year no matter how you slice it.

And even those numbers are propped up by how efficient at times the catch-and-run and the screen game were for this offense. They got some really big gains on underneath throw. because I think some of that stuff was well designed, and I think the player's skill sets are conducive to that. So I was curious, okay, let's kind of zero in here and look at throws just beyond five yards. So not even deep throws, but not underneath throws.

Where does he fall? The only guys who had a lower EPA per dropback, so this removes all sacks too, by the way. The only guys who had a lower EPA per dropback on throws beyond five yards last year than Caleb Williams were Cooper Rush, Gardner Minchew, Daniel Jones, and Anthony Richardson. He completed 51% of those throws

beyond five yards last year. Only Cooper Rush and Anthony Richardson had a lower completion percentage. So the sacks are the biggest issue, but that's not the only issue. There's still stuff going on here that I think is, there are lingering problems

that are worth worrying about. I guess that's what I would say. There are. And where I think he's slightly different from a guy like Anthony Richardson, is like Richardson, he misses, some throws because he can be late in his process and stuff like that.

But Richardson also just was never inaccurate quarterback, like even coming out of college. Whereas I do think Caleb Williams was accurate coming out of college. And you still see flashes of really, really good accuracy from him. It just goes back to what I thought the biggest issue with Caleb Williams was, as he just does things a little too fast. Like what's the quote where it's like, you want to be quick, but you don't want to hurry. Yeah, be quick, don't hurry. Yeah, be quick, don't hurry.

Caleb Williams is always in a hurry. Like it just feels like he's so jumpy. Or he's not in a hurry enough. It's either one or the ever. It's he's taking a sack or the ball's coming out too fast and he's throwing and he's just getting a little bit too ants and he makes a throw and he misses. Like that happened too often with him. And you just kind of have to sell yourself that those rare moments in between where he did find the balance were insanely insanely good. And you just hope that Ben Johnson pulls enough of them out of him because he did do a lot of stuff really well.

What do you think that was? Like, what do you think were the best types of things and the best moments that we saw from Caleb Williams as a rookie? Because I do have some things that come to mind. I'm curious how you saw it. When he actually decided to play like USC Caleb Williams, it was awesome. Like when he got outside of the pocket and was able to do some of the weird just flipping his hips and making skyhook throws and all this weird stuff, it was really good. And I think he was a good scrambler once he got a little bit more decisive once he started playing. And then to me, there are.

moments where he can be a little bit too jumpy in the pocket, where he runs himself into pressure. But I thought overall, his pocket management mechanics actually did impress me the more I watched. He will do a really good job of like, okay, pressure off the right side, one big hop step to my left, and then two more quick steps to reset and then I can make it throw. And he just, it felt like he had such a good idea of how to do that. And also, it's a small thing. He protects the ball really well in the pocket. Like he'll pull it away from where he knows the free rusher is and stuff like that. Just little stuff where it's like the good guys know how to do that. And so the fact that a lot of else was bad is really frustrating, but the good guys know how to do stuff like that.

I'm so glad you said this because it makes for such a weird conversation. Have you ever thought about or seen another quarterback who gets sacked at an astronomical rate but has good pocket awareness? Dude, okay. So honestly, younger career Joe Burrow was like this where he did move around the pocket and had good escapeability. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a really good one. He would just hold the ball and take sacks anyway. So you're hoping that he is something like that.

And then even then, Joe Burrow kind of finally fixed that. You know, it took five, six years, but he's finally there. But that's why there's a glimmer of hope for me. Because again, I think with some of these guys who get sacked all the time, like Will Lovis, for example. I'm not picking on Will Lovis, but I think this is an instructive example. Will Lovis is a guy who gets sacked all the time. His pocket movement is horrendous. Like, he has no awareness for how he should be moving around the podcast.

And so when you watch Caleb Williams, the ability to slide, to shuffle, to step up, to sense where guys are coming from, he is very good at that. And so I think the fact that that still shines through while he's getting sacked at this rate gives you some hope that there's something on the other side. So I think the pocket movement and awareness is definitely a positive. And I think you can hopefully count on that leading to some improvement. The other thing I think he does really well. To me, they're the best throws of his the entire season.

there's these intermediate sort of vertical routes where he just lets it rip. That dagger-hitch concept I'm talking about. You mentioned that throw to Keenan Allen on the out and up against the lions. He had multiple seam ball ripped throws during that two-game stretch where they played the Packers and the Vikings in back-to-back weeks. That was the best stretch of his entire season. On those plays where he's playing a little bit looser and he's just letting those things rip, that's where you see the physical talent and the ability really show up.

and he's very accurate on those throws. And one other area where I think you saw some of his best moments as a passer are in the two-minute drill, latent games. Because again, there's a looseness to the way that he's playing in those moments. So I think those are the two areas when I'm trying to convince myself that this can get better, beyond this is one of the worst situations imaginable, are the pocket movement and awareness and what he looks like on some of those ripped intermediate throws because there is a lot to like on those plays. whether that's enough to feel good about this moving forward, I don't know.

But when you combine it with moving from what they were dealing with last year to Ben Johnson, I think you can start to get yourself there a little bit. That's why I'm still buying it. Like him being as good as he is at some of the little stuff, him being as good as scrambler as he is, him having that arm. And then you combine it with Ben Johnson, who some of the conversations that you've talked about that he had with Jared Gough, where it was very clearly like, all right, man, what do you like?

How do we get there? If he has that conversation with Caleb Williams, I think Caleb is just going to play a lot more confident than he did last year, where it didn't seem as much of that conversation was going on. So I just, maybe it's like too simple of thinking, but I just feel like he's too talented for this to not work to some level. And so maybe he's never the top five quarterback we want, but I would be shocked if he's anything worse than like current Kyler Murray.

I would be shocked. Really? I think that's, I mean, that's a pretty tough. like quarterback 13 that's not like that crazy yeah i guess so i guess i'm more conceiving of kailer as like the flashes high-end flashes we've seen from kailer is like a back half of the top 10 sort of quarterback and so that to me feels pretty rich given what we saw from kaleb willms as a rookie but i think kair's entire career i can i can understand that i again i feel like some

of the in-pocket movement stuff from kaleb is better than anything we've ever seen from kiler but he's obviously a much lesser athlete so my maybe again this is just what i have to tell myself at this stage. But when you have one of those situations that you can just see the quarterback is drowning immediately and his head is just swimming immediately. And you switch that out for something that is just so far on the other side. I keep coming back to that Jared Gough rookie year and what he looked like as a rookie and then what he looked like when Sean McVeigh got there. And maybe that's an exception that we shouldn't rely on. And if you're using that as a bit of hope, maybe it's misguided. But I do think it's there based on some of the higher

and flashes that we saw from Caleb Williams. And again, some of those elements, whether it's the playmaking, whether it's the awareness that did remind me of the guy we saw at USC, I feel like that's still in there somewhere. And if you have the right coaching staff and support system to get it out of him, I think that's possible. I still really do. I don't think it's like, I know we all say the, you know, Jared Goff revival thing isn't that common. But if you look at some of the pieces, it's like, yeah, we talk about Ben Johnson now the same way

that we probably talked about Sean McVeigh before he took that job. They both improved the offensive lines on them. I think we see, we probably have a higher opinion of Ben Johnson. Yes. Yeah. I think we all thought Sean McVey was like,

okay, this could work, yeah, but we all expect Ben Johnson to work. So maybe it's even better. But like that is the thing is that, you know, that year one to year two

jumped the way that Goff took doesn't happen a lot. But situations also don't improve like this that often. So Caleb Williams is being presented a pretty good opportunity. All right. We're going to take a quick break here, and then we are going to get back with the second overall pick in last year's draft, who had a pretty good season, I think. All right, let's talk about Jaden Daniels.

We are not going to spend as much time on Jaden Daniels in this show for two different reasons. One, Jaden Daniels is already good. There's not a lot of, like, where does Jaden Daniels go from here? I do think that's an interesting conversation. It's less important than it is for some of these other guys who fall in a different class of quarterback. And two, we're going to do a show next week that is going to include a conversation about Jaden Daniels. And so I don't think we have to tread a lot of that same territory. But I definitely wanted to hit him as part of this exercise anyway.

So let's start with that first question. What was Jaden Daniels's rookie season really as you went back and studied it? I mean, it's very rare a rookie comes in and just looks that prepared. Like he just looked like a guy who was ready to play NFL football. Like his ability to replace the blitz at certain times, his ability to know when to pull the rip court in the pocket and just go. And like sometimes he would run himself into sacks. But he had a good sense of when to leave and be a scrambler. His sense of when is the right time to really take my one-on-one shots.

Like it Caleb Williams, to go back to that point, Caleb Williams threw a bunch of one-on-ones down the sideline, in part because sometimes he just didn't know what to do. Whereas I think Jane Daniels had a much better understanding. of like this is actually the right time to give Terry McClearn a shot here. And he had a really good understanding of like the flow of the game and what was the purpose of the play at hand. And some of that goes back to obviously Cliff Kingsbury doing a good job coaching. But Jaden Daniels just came in with a really good understanding of how to play a consistent down-to-down football.

And then you compare that with his skill set that is going to get explosive plays by virtue of him being the best athlete on the field. It was just kind of this beautiful combo where mentally he's, was giving you a high floor and then physically he's one of the most exciting players at the position. So he was, it was as good as it felt in the moment. That idea of be quick but not in a hurry. That's Jaden Daniels. Getting back to it, that's exactly how he plays.

For a young player to very rarely be sped up, but to play as fast as he does is remarkable. And I think that's the thing that I kept coming back to over and over and over again is that he was just never rattled in the pocket, sometimes to his detriment, but he was never rattled in the pocket. And so the blitz replacement stuff is the first place my mind goes. And we're going to talk about a lot of guys on this show. And as I compare some of these quarterbacks and where their weaknesses were and where their strengths were, like, I think Bo Nix had a really nice season in a lot of ways. Bo Nix was objectively bad against the Blitz last year. And then you look at what J. Daniels did and you just get reminded of how rare it is for a quarterback to have that sort of spatial awareness this early in his career. If you're going to avoid any sort of space on defense,

he's going to hurt you. Like even if you remove scrambles, so take that away, which is one of his biggest superpowers, he was sixth in the NFL and EPA drop back when blitzed last year. That's crazy. And that's without taking off once.

That's solely on throws. And because think of, I'm going to bring back running a little bit, but like think of the three ways you can beat the blitz. You can either replace it. Like if it's his own blitz, you can replace whoever the blitzers.

That's a great way to do it. Jane Jain knows is good at that. You can just say, screw it. I'm going to run. you guys are going to have your back turned on, you know, against the defense or whatever. He's really good at that. Or it's just, hey, bombs away. If you're blitz and I probably have a one-on-one.

He's also one of the best deep passers in the league. So like him having all of the answers against the blitz already. I mean, I think he was, I think Lamar Jackson was the only person in the entire NFL, if you do include running again, to be better against the blitz than him. Like, he was just, it was phenomenal, almost from the start. The only reason that I'm taking out scrambles in that stat is that I'm trying to poke holes and how this can potentially tail off plateau or regress a little bit. And I think the scrambling part of it is part of that conversation where he scrambled so often

and he's so good at it. It just feels like that would be hard to replicate. Like if you look historically at his scramble rate, it was one of the highest that we've seen in the last decade. And I just feel like that's going to be hard to do over and over and over again. So that's my biggest question is if some of that other stuff falls back to Earth a little bit. and even performance against the Blitz is not necessarily sticky. If you look at it, that can be volatile from season to season for guys.

So let's just say for argument's sake, he takes a small step back in the value we're creating from him as a scrambler and what he's doing as a passer against the Blitz. What does Jaden Daniels look like if those two things fall back to Earth a little bit? That to me becomes the most relevant question moving forward. And I think that, you know, from an EPA perspective, it probably will fall back. Because again, some of the reason his EPA per dropback was so high is because some of the times where they did blitz him, he throws a game winning touchdown, like deep down the field.

And like the deep down the field stuff is probably not going to hit at the same rate. But I would honestly suspect that like his success rate throwing against the blitz will probably maintain. And then you get the EPA fluctuations just based on like sometimes we catch a few deep balls and sometimes we don't and stuff like that. I mean, that's probably right. Yeah, I would expect the down to down stuff to say because when you watch the film with him, right, he's very clearly a guy who understands how to beat the blitz and how to replace it. And when is the best time to run versus just replace it? Oh, it's a man blitz.

Okay, I can take off zone blitz. Cool. I'm going to throw where your linebacker just left. He has a very good sense of what that is. So as you project him moving forward, what do you expect from Jaden Daniels in year two? I think from a pure production standpoint, it might not be as insane. Because again, I do think they got, even though he's a very good. deep passer. I think they got a little bit fortunate with how well some of that stuff went.

And then obviously in terms of winning some of those games, I think they got really fortunate with how some of that stuff went. I still, when I watch him though, I just feel like there's too many high floor things for him to fall that much further. Like him being one of the best scramblers in the league is already really good. He, you know, we've talked about this on a different show before. He doesn't really put the ball in harm's way like ever. Like he'll have, it was like once a month during his rookie season. He threw a bizarre interception. And then other than that, he didn't really put the ball in harm's way. I think that's the spatial awareness part of it. I think he just has such a good sense of where defenders are. He's able to keep the ball out of harm's way. And again,

it's like it's an advanced thing for a quarterback that young, like his ability to have that sort of feel for the game. If I was trying to make a case for why this isn't just going to be like a rocket ship ride all the way to the top immediately, there are a couple things that I would point out. I would go back to just what he's doing from the pocket as a passer deeper into place. Right. So if you're not going to vacate space and you're going to make him play from the pocket, which is very hard to do, by the way, because he's such a dynamic scramble and he's so good at escaping. But think back to some of the games where he didn't, wasn't able to scramble as much and they made him play from the pocket and teams weren't necessarily blitzing a ton.

I think about that Steelers game where he struggled. And I think about the first Eagles game on that Thursday night where that offense didn't play very well, and I think about the playoff game. If you look at the numbers, when teams, and this is obviously, this is nitpicking, this is getting very granular, but I do think it speaks to a larger point. So when teams brought four last year and he didn't scramble, so these are plays from the pocket where you're not vacating space with an extra defender and you're bringing four pass rushers, he had a negative EPA per dropback. He was just behind Aaron Rogers and just ahead of Bowenicks.

And again, I know this is granular. I know this is nitpicking, but I do think it speaks to like a larger. question, but if you make him play from that space, what does he look like if you're having seven guys in coverage? And what I think is so interesting is that what they did this offseason and fortifying the offensive line, whether on purpose or not, to me, gets ahead of this. It allows him to be more comfortable in the pocket and have more time and space to operate in the pocket and have cleaner pockets.

Because with some quarterbacks, we've talked about this. He's not a creative player from the pocket. When it comes to moving in the pocket, sliding in the pocket. So if your offensive line is going to be bad, I think that concern of what he's doing from the pocket deeper into plays when you're not blitzing, I think that can continue to be a concern. But if your offensive line is going to be good, I think you're then setting him up for success in those situations.

And again, whether it's on purpose or not, I like Washington potentially getting ahead of this by making your offensive line better. We talk all the time, how are you going to stay ahead of regression? How are you going to make sure it doesn't come? And I actually think what they did with Tunso and Connerly this offseason is a step in the right direction to prevent this from happening. I couldn't agree more because when I'm watching that, what you just said, that's that about the rushing for all that stuff kind of meshes with my eye test where I think the worst thing. That's why I looked it up. Yeah, the worst because the worst thing about his game, right, is like he's great against pressure when he can move or when he already knows where the throw is going to be, which again, like beating the blitz and a free rusher hits.

him. Okay, but he knows where the ball's supposed to go already. I think when he, a little bit later in the down, has to throw around a body, has to find the third man in his progression when the pocket's getting a little bit tight. That's not where you see a lot of his best ball. He either is better in those moments when he just leaves or again, the ball had come out sooner for one reason or another. When you get into that three second-ish area and the pocket is a little bit condensed, you just don't see him make as many of the weird arm angle throws that, you know, even Caleb Williams is capable. of Drake May, some of those other guys, that's not his best work. He's just been so good at doing all the other stuff that you just don't get pressed in those moments as often. But that goes back to the point of like, what if they're a little bit less fortunate on the deep stuff? So you just have to live in those moments a little bit more situationally. That's where I think you could get some of the stuff where this starts to fall back to earth a little bit. But I think that's, if you're trying to, again, combat a step back in some areas by getting better in those situations, I think that's the case you can make for this offense being as good, even if they're a little bit less unlucky or a little bit less lucky and the volatile stuff goes the other way of so often.

Maybe you don't hit as many scrambles on third and fourth down. Maybe you don't hit as many deep balls that are kind of coin flip plays. So that's why I'm confident in this because now you've built an offense with that offensive line, hopefully, where if you're sitting there 2.9 seconds into the play and he's having to operate from the pocket, it's not going to be muddy. It's not going to be dirty. It's going to be cleaner than it was last year. So those situations, you're more set up for success. It's a fascinating little turn. Like, I think that people would look at what they were last year on offense.

They'd be like, they were so good. Why would you spend most of your resources and attention this offseason try to make that side of the ball better? And I think this is the case for why it's important. Yeah, because they want to make sure that it's going to stay that good. And that really is such a fascinating way to frame it with them getting out ahead of it. Because, yeah, if they're 6%, less lucky with some of the deep stuff in scrambling,

but also give up a 6% lower pressure rate because they've improved the offensive line. Ultimately, if you bake in any amount of improvement from Jaden Daniels, that's probably going to net you a positive in the long game. Yeah, he's such an interesting player. A lot of the concerns I had about him coming out of college about the lack of creation from the pocket

and his movement around the pocket, it's still true. But he's so good at some of the other stuff that it doesn't matter. and now they're trying to mitigate some of those relative weaknesses by how they're building the rest of the offense. So I think the conclusion here is we think Jaden Daniels is going to stay very, very good. And even the areas that might be a slight cause for a concern, they're trying to combat it in the right ways to make sure they have answers for what stage two and version two of this offense looks like.

All right, let's do this. Let's get to Mr. Drake May of the New England Patriots. What in your mind? and be reasonable here. What was Drake May's rookie season really? That's a dangerous word. I think so how do I do this? It's hard for me to stay reasonable.

Obviously, Jaden Daniels had the best rookie season. I think outside of him, when you're watching the film, May was far and away better than everybody else. Like, to me, it's not very close. I don't think I agree with that. I think that we only got three games from Pennix. I think I can make a solid case.

I think why the three games we got from Pennix were as impressive as what we got from Drake May. They're very different. I think Pennix is the worst of the bunch. That's going to be a very fun discussion. Really? Oh, I totally disagree with that. Which, by the way, worst is like, I still think he can be fine, by the way. But like, so this is a very good quarterback class.

I totally disagree with that. They're very different players, all of them. Like, Pennix and Knicks are very different, but they're also similar in some ways. Like, I think that those two guys are the most interesting conversation. I still think the flashes I got from Pennix, even if they feel different. Like, if you look at the type of player Michael Penning's and the type of player Drake May is, they're very, very different players. Like, Drake May, so much of what he's good at comes from the pocket movement, the scrambling,

what he's doing as a runner and an athlete. And I don't want to step on this. I want to do this when we have the Michael Panics conversation. But I still think that what we saw from Pennix, even if I think there's holes in it, I still think that three-game stretch is more. impressive than what we got from Drake May last year, even if I like what Drake May did last year. Okay, so I'm going to throw it back on you then. Why? Like, what are the reservations with Drake May? We'll start there and then I'll get to my effusive praise at the end. I think that it is,

there are two things. Decision making is probably decision making sprays and I think every once in a while he can get sped up. The last point, of course he will. Think about what offensive line he was playing behind last year. It's impossible to go through an. entire season of that and not be bailing on stuff faster than you should be. Because I think your working theory as a quarterback in that offense should be the pocket is going to get dirty immediately. And I have to mitigate that as often as possible. But I do think that led to some bad plays when there were throws available to be made.

But I think that's partially a cause of the environment. I thought he played very well for given the circumstances. I think that there are plenty of moments where the decision making leave something to be desired. And I do think that there are sprays. Like, there are just throws that are half a mile away from where they want to be. And so that combined with so many of the good things that he did, I'm still very, very optimistic about him. But again, I think even though the packaging and what Michael Pennix did is extremely different,

I still feel like when you look at the overall quality of them, I can make a decent case for why Pennix's stretches a rookie was better. So the accuracy thing, especially up next to Pennix, I think is fascinating. because I think Drake May's misses are gross. He misses by a lot. But some very accurate pastors also do that. Justin Herbert really does this a lot. Where when he misses, it's in the next dimension.

And I think May does a lot of that. But on a down-to-down basis, I think he's actually a very accurate pastor. It's just that when he misses, it looks gross. And I think it makes us feel worse when we see those plays. I think I don't disagree with that. I think we're too quick to do. dismiss or to wave away those sorts of quarterbacks. Because another guy I feel like is like this is Trevor Lawrence where we have all

these moments where it's like, oh, look at the high end stuff, look at what he can do. And then the sprays happen. It's just like, oh, that's just kind of what you get. You know, you just kind of get those. Well, if it's third and eight and you're spraying a ball 10 yards out of bounds, like that's a concern. Like that's something we should take into account. I don't think it's overriding all of the good things.

But I do think it's absolutely part of the package as we're considering what break May is as a quarterback. I think that's fair. I think May is even more accurate down to down than Trevor Lawrence. And that's what I'm saying. Trevor has a repeated issue of missing throws, even for as good as I think that he is. Whereas I don't actually feel that that's true with May. I feel like he does a better job of being pretty accurate consistently.

And then just the misses do look really bad when he misses because he throws 100 miles an hour. But I thought generally he was pretty accurate. To all three levels, some of his best were, you know, he threw some really nice go-ball. that year, but also I thought underneath he did a really good job and better than I thought, which actually, like, for as much as I liked him coming out of college, I thought he was going to be bad underneath because it's kind of where he was worse at in college, where his quick game footwork could just be gross, it was all out of whack. But I actually thought it looked relatively clean as a rookie and certainly more put together than I thought. So I think even if we

got some of the dumb interception moments, some of the sprays that I think we thought we were going to get out of college, I think the down to down and the. I think the down to down and the quieter moments in between were actually really good. And there's even a sequence in the bills game that I think to me kind of speaks to a lot of the control that Drake May was playing with. It's in the first quarter. There's about four minutes left. It's a second and nine. New England motions into this empty formation and Buffalo ends up bringing their mic backers. So it's a man blitz. Drake May realizes, okay, if it's a man blitz, there's nothing for me to replace. Like I'm not replacing a vacant spot in the zone. I have to just take my matchup. He

instantly tries to throw one-on-one down the left side line. But he kind of throws it out of bounds knowing he's about to get heated up and this is a waste of my time. So it's just like, all right, move on to the next play. Next play is third and nine. He ends up scrambling because there's immediately, immediate pressure off the right side. And then right when he gets to the sticks, he like spins into two defenders to get the two extra yards. And so that to me just speaks to like, I thought as a rookie to be in that second and nine against

the bills and be like, it's okay. We can waste the play. We can burn it. We can move on. and then third and nine make the scramble that he did. I just, that to me spoke to some of the high floor stuff that that team should not have been nearly as decent as they were on offense when he was playing. And it was because of moments like that.

And I want to be clear about this. My saying that I think that you can make an argument that Michael Penning's stretch was better, I think it's because I was surprised by how impressed I was going back and watching Michael Penix. That is not pessimism about Drake May. I actually am very, very excited about Drake May. I don't think any of what you're saying is wrong. And I realize I'm coming from a point.

of like whatever 10 for enthusiasm is, I'm at like 12 or 13. And you're probably at like a 7 or an 8, which is completely reasonable. And I'm the one being a little bit unreasonable. But I really just do think he's a really, really awesome player. I just think that we should not discount down-to-down decision-making and accuracy sprays because we're too quick to do that and talk ourselves into the high-end plays for some of these guys. But overall, when you look at what he is in totality, everything he's bringing to the

table, I agree with the accuracy thing to all things. levels, by the way. Some of the goal balls down the right side line over the course of last season. Like the one he threw to Bouté in that Bill's game, like the drop in the bucket throw down the right sideline. He had just a rip to Hunter Henry on third and eight against the blitz in that Bill's game that was disgusting. The falling down over the middle throw to Bouti over the middle of the field off play action in that game was absolutely ridiculous. That one is awesome because during, it's an under center play action. And I think they bring like Dorian, Williams through the B gap or something like that. And it's like right in his face during his

drop back. So he like shimmies around it as his running back is like kind of a boarding the play action thing to get in front of it. And then like you said, he's kind of falling away and just ripping one over the middle to booty like that. That is the type of talent I'm going to bet on just every single time. And when you look at what he did as a scrambler, it was absolutely ridiculous. Like you're talking about the throws and the high end throws are absolutely there. But what he's able to do as a runner and a scrambler. The only people in the NFL last year, the only quarterbacks who generated more EPA as scramblers.

And this is total. And he didn't start for the first four or five weeks of the season. Where Jaden Daniels, Jalen Hertz, Patrick Mahomes, and Josh Allen. That is it. It's literally the best. And so when I watch him play, I think he might be a better scrambler than this person, but stick with me here for a second. I've always said about Justin Herbert.

I wish Justin Herbert were 10% dumber. I wish Justin Herbert would get like a mild lobotomy and play football. And I do think that last year was kind of like that. Like if you watch his play style last season compared to years past, we got a looser more carefree version of Justin Herbert. And I think that's why last year was his best season as an NFL player. But I think that's just kind of who Drake May is naturally. Like he's just a little bit of Justin Herbert with like the wild horse Josh Allen from early in

his career. And that sort of player is something I can very much get behind. Isn't it funny how Justin Herbert got a little bit more like loose and creative this year? And Josh Allen probably got as like boring as he's ever been. And then Drake May comes into the league and he really is kind of like whatever the midpoint of that is supposed to be. It's beautiful. And I think that the athleticism and the scrambling are fantastic. And I think his pocket movement and awareness is really, really good, especially for a big quarterback. There's just so many things to like about the bones of his game. And talking about some of the issues, I think it really is nitpicking. And this is a rookie in a terrible situation.

We've talked about this a bunch. He finished 21st in EPA per drop back last year among 36 qualified quarterbacks. That's like a borderline miracle when you think about what he was playing in. And I agree with what you've said at the beginning. I actually do think structurally, Alex Van Pelt did a fine job. Like, I don't think this was an offense that was DOA in the way that the Bears offense was, even if the players were worse, but the players were still very, very bad. When you watch the offensive line try to hold up and you watch what he's dealing with, the fact that they were able to function as like a competent NFL offense last year speaks to what this guy is bringing to the table. And I don't think they're going to be good this year,

the supporting cast, but you putting like, even if Will Campbell is like mildly disappointing, what he is going to be at left tackle with Morgan Moses is just infinitely, better than what you were getting from this group last year. And to bring it back to Josh Allen again, isn't that how year two of Josh Allen felt where it's like we're bringing in stuff that's not great, you know, the Cole Beasley's, the John Browns. Yeah. And it's like this isn't, it doesn't make anyone feel like we're going to make the Super Bowl. But Jesus, this is way better than like Robert Foster and whoever that we were thrown to.

So that is exactly what the, what the bills were doing during that time. I think that's a good way to spin it. I think that is like the best case. Like I think about what Josh Allen was as a rookie. I think Drake May was better than Josh Allen was his rookie. Josh Allen wasn't a good rookie. He just wasn't. No, he was not good.

The numbers were much worse than what Drake Mays were. I do think that Drake May is probably a more polished products coming into the league than Josh Allen was. And so I think you can make an argument that Drake May doesn't have as far to go. Like he's just further along in the process. But I think as rookies, there's a lot of comparisons to be made there. And I think that Drake, when you talk about the situation, and I think Drake was, Drake Mae was better as a rookie than Josh Allen was.

So I think there's just so many reasons to be very, very excited about what he can end up becoming. All right. Let's take one more quick break here. And then we're going to get back with our last two quarterbacks. All right. Let's talk about Michael Pennix because I think that I have a feeling we're going to be a little bit further apart on this than any of the other guys that we've talked about. But I think partially that's because of how impressed I was going back and watching Michael Panix this morning. So I want to hear from you, what was Michael Penix's rookie season really those three games in your mind? I think his best moments are very tantalizing.

He throws the shit out of a blaze out, man. Like, he really does. Like so many of his- I think he might be the best outside the numbers thrower in the NFL now. I don't think that's crazy. Like, and they do it all the time. It's funny. My experience watching them was like, man, everything in this office.

is either a blaze out or a drag route. Because he's comfortable getting enough through the progression to get to the drag if he needs to. But his best throw is that blaze out. And you know what it kind of reminded me of? It reminded me of like just a, you know, a light version of like what Carson Palmer was doing with Bruce Ariens where like that's all they were doing, right? Was they were throwing a ton of seam routes.

They were throwing a ton of these out routes at like 12 yards. And if not, we would check it. We would check it down and we'd be fine. And like Michael Pennix, I think brings a lot of that. He brings that aggression. he brings that velocity. He really can spin it when he wants to. I think when I watch him,

some of the reservations I still have or I still really don't think that he's a creative player. I think he's better. Yeah, he's not at all. He's just not. His flexibility as a passer is better than I thought it was. Like his ability to find arm angles and make throws on the move was a little better.

It's not good. Even that is still not good. This to me is the best possible example of testing numbers versus what a player is in practice. When you watched him in college, there's a reason he didn't look like a four, five, eight player. It's because he doesn't play like a four, five, eight player.

Even if he is fast in a straight line, he's fast in a straight line the same way Blaine Gabber was fast in a straight line. It doesn't matter. Like, he's not a twitchy player in the pocket. And I say that as a criticism, but I also think there's so many good things that he does that it might not matter

that much. He's just such a strange player to think about because I think a lot of the high-end stuff is super tantalizing, but I think what you're saying is 100% true. Like, he's not a creative twitchy passer no matter what that 40-time is going to try to tell you. He's just not, and like he's not creative outside of the pocket. And I also don't feel like he's creative, like, within structure. I think there are some guys who, like, know how to get to weird answers or get to weird ball location stuff. To me, I saw some of this from like Drake May, and that's why I liked him so much. Penix is very much in a good way and a bad way, a very robotic quarterback. And I think you can be a very effective player that way.

Like, Dak Prescott has been one of the best players' quarterbacks in the league at times. And he, to me, is very robotic. Justin Herbert, I think, has been very robotic at times. So you can still be really, really good at that. But it does come with downsides. And to me, it's, I guess the disconnect is maybe measuring how many different downsides there are. Like, to me, I think he's the least accurate quarterback of this bunch on a down-to-down basis. and some of his sprays are really concerning.

And I think to me, I have less faith that he can fix it in the way that Caleb Williams can or Drake May or whoever because of the launch point of his ball is so low that I truly believe it's going to be hard for him to ever get touched the way that some of these other guys can. And I think that's fair. There are a few things as I'm trying. And this is why he's such a fascinating player to me is because I think that the strengths are so strong, but I think that the weaknesses are undeniable and trying to square. them together is just really hard.

So you look at the high end stuff and those high end throws outside the numbers. And so there's a throw he made against the Panthers in Week 18, where it's a whole shot down the left sideline. And there's been some discussion about this throw that I was unaware of. Like Nate and Steven had Ruez had talked about it. And they thought that he was trying to throw the ball in like a quick out to Kyle Pitts and overthrew him and hit the whole shot to Cadero Hodge. I didn't see that.

Like the amount of juice he's trying to put on that ball. I thought he was trying to throw the whole shot. And so I reached out today to somebody on the Falcons coaching staff because I was curious. And they were like, no, no, he was trying to do that. We talked about it that he didn't throw it earlier in the game. And so you watch that throw and it's like a holy shit type of throw. And beyond the arm's strength, the anticipation he has on some of those outside the numbers, like deep outs, like that connection he has with Mooney is real.

And I'm very excited to watch that this year. And so that to me is like a super high end strength of his and his superpower. or his arm on those throws is already one of the best in the league. And I think he plays very fast. So he's not a scramble. He's never going to be a scramble. He had one of the lowest scramble rates in the league. Again, getting back to that, he might be fast, but he's not athletic thing.

He does not scramble. But he gets to checkdowns. He's a very good pocket passer in that way. He's finding answers. He doesn't take sacks. He didn't take sacks as a rookie because he understands where those outlets are. And you see him very quickly. getting from one to two to three to four to five on some of these plays.

So I think that's the driving force behind my optimism, is that you're combining these elite high-end throws with pretty pronounced processing ability already from a young player. And I think that combination, mostly the processing, leads to a lack of negative place. He's not putting the law in harm's way very often, and he's just not taking very many sacks. That is counterbalanced, though,

by the fact that he is not a creative player at all. He's just not. He's not going to be a creative player. When you're pushing him off his spot, I think the arm angle stuff is not as good as it's going to need to be if he doesn't move. Because there are times where somebody will be in his face, he'll have to change his arm angle a little bit. It leads to overthrows.

That's going to be a spot where he's going to have to change his arm slot, throw some more sidearm stuff, get some Staffordy elements in there if he's going to survive as a quarterback who doesn't move very often. And it's the touch thing. He does not have a lot of touch on. these throws. He has a lot of arm strength. I don't think he has as much armed talent as other guys who survive and thrive purely as throwers in the NFL. When you're watching him try to layer balls to the second level, slot fades, things like that, he doesn't have really good touch on those

throws. So this brings me to a place where I'm like, I don't know what to do with all of this. Like those two, like the positives and the weaknesses combined, I just don't know where I land on it, but I think I'm still optimistic because of the combination of positive things he's bringing to the table. And I think that's fair. I'm more optimistic now than I think I was at the end of this season. Like going back and watching it, I did feel slightly better about it. But I guess I do just have too many of the reservations, not even about just the touch, but I do think just his down to down, like he sprays a lot.

Like he just misses throws that he shouldn't miss. And I think when you're a line drive thrower, that's going to happen. And he's the most line. drive thrower. He's the most line drive thrower. And like I feel like in, that's why some of his red zone stuff that I think is always going to be tricky is that one, he's a scatter shot already and he lacks touch. So sometimes throwing those slot fades in the red zone, throwing those corner routes where you're trying. It's just hard to access the back pylon and I think that might always be an issue for him. So that was kind of was my biggest hangup. And then that on top of him not

being a creative player, I think was tricky. It's funny you mentioned he's like a weird player to talk about. I think he's like if you just inverted to a Tunga Viloa's heat map, where instead of the weak arm over the middle, it's big arm outside the numbers. But all the other stuff in their game is pretty similar. But here's why I'm more optimistic about Pennix than I'm about Tua. Because if you're not going to be a creative player and you're not going to be a scrambler, you have to check the ball down efficiently. It has to be part of your game. He does do that well. And he's already doing that.

And so I think that to me, because I was thinking about that this morning, it's like, okay, if we're not going to be creative and we're not going to add value as a scrambler, how are we going to survive as a high-end quarterback in the league? And to me, it goes back to the checkdown thing. And the fact that he's already doing it and he's doing it quickly and correctly as a really young player, I think that drives a good portion of the optimism. And that's a really good point to bring up, because that's what makes him different than Levis, like last year.

Like Levis was a touchdown to checkdown player in theory, but he really is a touchdown to sack player. Whereas Pennix is a touchdown to checkdown player. And he does a really good job of being like, okay, the touchdown's not on this play. We're just going to get the checkdown. We'll get six. And we'll be fine next play. He does do a much better job of that. He doesn't take sacks. I mean, he didn't take sex last year. And so that if you're, again, how are you going to survive as a pocket player? That's, that's the formula. He led the league in big time throw rate per PFF in the three games that he played. And he had one of the lowest turnover where they play rates and one of the lowest sack rates. that's your path right there.

You can be a really good quarterback in the NFL without being creative or a scrambler if you have those traits in combination. I think the one complicating factor to that is the fact that the armed talent overall has some holes in it because he struggles to put touch on certain throws and just there are certain throws he doesn't have in his back. Like some of these guys who survive as throwers, like Stafford to me is a very good example of this. Stafford has every single club.

every single one. And Pennix at this point does not have all the clubs and I think that's one area where it might hold him back a little bit. I couldn't agree more. And the last caveat I want to bring up he did only play three games.

Those were some really bad defenses too. And I think that's important to like try to contextualize like how important some of this stuff is. Obviously some of his best throws are going to some of the best stuff that he did is going to work against any defense. Like when you can spend it 100 miles an hour

that he can, But I think to me it was important trying to watch through some of these games being like, okay, the best defense he played was Washington, who was not very good. And the other defenses were it was the Giants and the Panthers, some of the worst in the league. So I think that more than anything, honestly, made him complicated to watch. It's easy when you look at the strengths and the weaknesses lined up against each other. I can understand where it'll depend on how you want to weigh them, like where you come down with him. And I think because I like him so much stylistically, I'm more inclined to be.

believe in the strengths and minimize the weaknesses. And I don't know how you don't feel this way to an extent. Like, he is nothing but an honorable player. He's, he's extremely honorable. I think there are just, there's something about him not having an ounce of creativity that, that irks me a little bit and not having the touch. Whereas like, that's, I feel like the difference a little bit between him and like Dak, right?

Like, Dak has some of it. The difference between him and Gino. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's, I think that is maybe driving part of the reason I like him is because I do think there's like a decent chunk of Gino to his game. But I do think Gino has much more touch and plays with much more touch than Michael Panics does. And I think that's the difference is that I can see some quarterbacks I really like in him. I can see some of the Matt Stafford stuff. I can see the Carson Palmer, who I absolutely adored, some of the Dak Prescott.

There are just when I think about some of his lack of mobility, lack of creativity, and then the lack of touch, I just wonder if he can actually reach those heights. And maybe he can. maybe I'll be wrong, but I think that's like the slight disconnect for me. And I think this is a conversation about what the ceiling is, right? Right. Because if he's never going to be that creative of a player, I think that you're probably establishing immediately that he's never going to ever break into the upper upper echelon of quarterbacks.

I think I'm fine having real doubts about that already based on like what his playstyle is and what he is. But to me, he absolutely can be like one of the higher end guys a step down from that based on what he has shown. I think the touch is the one thing I would keep coming back to that would give me a little bit of pause with that. And we'll see what happens. Maybe that's just who he is. It might be like to me, I did a Falcon show maybe a month or so ago.

And he's a slightly different pastor in terms of where they want to target. But I think I expect him or I think the most reasonable outcome is that he's like a Ryan Tannahill in Tennessee level of quarterback where he can produce at a really high level in a particular way. And he can be a not great, but pretty good quarterback for you. Okay. So let's take that a step further, though. Ryan Tannahill is going to give you a little bit more as a runner than Michael Panix did. Ryan Tano had his best. Ryan Tano at his best was not like an Uber productive runner, but he was a good athlete and could give you something.

And he weaponized the athleticism much better than Michael Penex does. But what did Ryan Tanna Hill do way too often? Ryan Tannenhill took a disgusting amount of sacks. So I think that to me is what's so interesting about this. It almost is more like a Kirk Cousins with like a slightly better arm, but with a little with less touch. That's why he's so hard to talk about because there just aren't a lot of

quarterbacks like him. That is a really good point. With almost all of these other players that we're talking about or have talked about, I have like a good other player I can put them up against. But Pennix is in a lot of ways, kind of a one-on-one.

Because even saying like the Tua thing I brought up, that's not really a useful comparison when like physically they're as different as they possibly could be. Yeah. And again, I think that's why I struggle to figure him out. But I just, I like him.

realistically so much that I'm rooting for what is a unique player with a really cool skill set to break through because I just think watching him and having him be a character in the league would be really fun based solely on the way that he wants to play the position. It really, especially with Matt Stafford going out now. Now, if he's our new, like, step up and just be the I'm going to throw the damn ball guy, then I'll be pretty happy. That's it. We need someone to take up that mantle of Matthew Stafford's going to be gone in two years.

Let's get to our last one here. Bo Nix quarterback of the Denver Broncos had just a really nice rookie season based on the expectations coming in where he was drafted, et cetera. Finished 19th, any paper drop back among quarterbacks. Obviously took the Broncos to the playoffs. In your mind, what was the Bo Nix rookie season really? He kind of played two different seasons. Like, he played the first five weeks of the year, which was very, very bad. He was an objectively bad quarterback for a lot.

Like, I remember we were even texting, I think it was week five, that Saints game that they were playing on prime time. And they ended up winning that game. He played okay in the second half. The first half of that game was as bad as any of these rookies played all year long. He was scattershot. And it was coming on the heels of that Raiders game that was gross. That was also bad. That's a great point.

Like he was, it looked like putting together two of the worst games that you could possibly have as a rookie. And then after that, he kind of started to figure some stuff out. I think he became a little bit more. I still have questions about his pocket movement, but I think he got a little bit better about just standing strong and taking a hit if he needed to. He got a little bit better at that. I think he started trusting Cortland Sutton over the middle of the field a little bit more.

I think he became more creative. Like he's creative is maybe the wrong word. I think he's not a particularly creative guy, but he did better outside of the pocket of knowing when to pull the rip cord and knowing how to find the easiest guy. I think he did a really good job of that. So I just think for whatever reason, something clicked around week six and he became a pretty high floor player, even if they're, you know,

we'll get into it. Some other questions I still have with this game. I really liked watching him play in the second half of the season. And it was just such a big departure from how I felt watching him in the first half of the season. I think that what he does as an athlete is extremely impressive. Like he's a really good scrambler. The valley, we're talking about the EPA generated on scrambles over the course of the season. Drake May was fifth behind all of those guys who were the best scramblers in the league.

Bo Nix was one spot behind Drake May. And the other spot stat that we mentioned, I don't know, in a show in the last couple weeks, Bo Nix led the NFL in passing yardage outside of the pocket last year. When he's on the move, he's willing to rip like a deep over route. Like, I really like him in those sorts of situations. And it's both ways to, like, they do a great job of like sometimes they'll just sprint him out to his right. Every quarterback's good to the right.

It's the way you're throwing. But there's a play, I think I was watching the second Raiders game where he's got to bail out to his left and he finds like Devon Bailey is running a deep corner to that side. His ability to be sprinting to his left and just whip his hips back and just rocket the ball, he can really spin the damn ball, man. Like it's, it's as impressive as I see from like Drake May and Caleb Boys and stuff. Like it is, that is probably the part of his game I underrated the most coming out of college. Like I thought he was a comfortable passer on the move.

It didn't feel like he had quite the same umph that those guys had, but I kind of think he does. He is a pronounced good passer. Like, it is a pronounced strength of his the way that he can throw the ball in the move. And I totally agree moving back to the left. I think it was the Bengal game where he had to move to his left a little bit and like threw it back to Velae

on a crosser on third down. I was like, okay, that looks pretty damn good. And so I think the scrambling and what he does on the move, both strengths. The other strength that I would throw out there is that he didn't throw the ball deep a ton, but he is a good deep thrower. And not just the accuracy.

I think the timing on some of the deep. throws is really impressive. Like if you pause the tape, the moment that he's letting some of these deep throws go, the Troy Franklin one in the Bills game, the Marvin Mims touchdown in the Bengals game at the end of the season, that the cover two like running through, like running to the post between both safeties, I can't remember which game that was that he hit that shot. The Browns game. For him and James were just showing the shit out of the ball.

And when he, look at where he's letting that ball go. Like that is real confidence, that is seeing it really well. And I think the touch and accuracy on those throws is extremely impressive. So all that stuff to me is there. And he'll rip a deep inbreaker if he has the space to do it. Like he's not afraid to do that stuff. And so I think that's to me the strengths that stick out the most. Scambling, what he does on the move,

and then what he is able to do pushing the ball down the field when given those opportunities, when things are clean for him. And that deep intermediate area is not something he was asked to do a lot at Oregon. So I had a question about it coming out. It was like, okay, some of the throws he makes it Oregon over that area are nice, but they're asking him to do it like once or twice a game. Like how is that going to change in the NFL? And I think at the NFL level, he actually did handle it really well.

And that's one point I actually want to make about his arm that I even struggled with in college and still struggle with now. When he's throwing on the move, he has good velocity. When he's throwing like in between the numbers, he can really just throw it down the hallway and spin it 100 miles an hour. For whatever reason, when he's throwing outside of the numbers, he loses a lot of gas and touch. And I have yet to figure out what that is.

But it's a weird disconnect in his game that I can't quite get a hold on. If you're trying to stack up like where he is arm strength wise, like, how would you compare him to Baker Mayfield? Actually, very similarly. Like I think Baker, when he's throwing like down the hallway between the numbers, he can put a lot of velocity on the ball and he can control it relatively well, all that stuff. but outside of the numbers, he just can't seem to drive it quite the same way,

whereas I watch again, to go back from one of the other rookies like, Drake May, I don't have that concern with, and I want to be clear, Nick's outside the numbers is not as bad as like, I've seen from like Tuatunga Vilo where it's completely like a non-factor in his game.

It's just he goes from what I feel is like B plus arm strength down the middle to like be minus outside of the numbers for whatever reason. I ask that question because I'm just trying to figure out like what his high-end cases are and who I would compare him. too. And what came down to arm strength when I was rewatching today, I was like, I feel like Baker can put a little bit more on it. Like, I feel like Baker has a little bit more unfaunt than Nix does, but I think they're in a similar zip code. And so when you're combining that level of arm strength with what he does on the move and then what he does as a deep passer, there's a lot to like. And the numbers on the deep passing, he was fifth in success rate on deep throws this year. And that is not like a checkdown artist. But I think it's important to point out what he was asked to do very often in that offense. and there is a lot of underneath stuff. Okay, so the only person, the only quarterback in the league last year to have more behind the line of scrimmage pass attempts than Bo Nix was Patrick Mahomes. Bo Nix threw 29 touchdown passes last year.

Seven of them were on throws behind the line of scrimmage. And it's just, I think it's just an important thing to point out. When we're looking just at the raw stats and how a lot of this production came, that screen game, the way that they used mims, the way that they were able to design some of that underneath. neat stuff was a big driving force of that offense and also just the overall production that Nix had last year. It absolutely was. Like they did also with his production, he threw four touchdowns in a week 18 game against the chiefs that was like not real. And so that actually what I noticed to watch it when I was going back and watching today. I was like, I'm not doing this. What I noticed is that going back through my stats, I was like, wait, actually the best way to

look at Nix is just do everything from week six to week 17 because that's when he started to turn it around and then you take out the week eight team game that was like obviously fake. And so that was where I did most of my like statistical analysis of him. But while I do think he did a lot of stuff well, I do think the offense, because of what you're talking about, like them doing such a good screen game, them having a lot of really good run after catch opportunities. And even their play action stuff down the field, he's an accurate passer, but they did a really good job of scheming that up. on a success rate basis, he was worse than Drake May in a significantly worse situation. And I think you saw that when you watch Bo Nix is that for as good as I think he is going,

like getting to the top of his drop and knowing where the ball needs to be, I think sometimes the longer a play lingers, kind of like we were talking about with Jane Daniels, if he's stuck in the pocket, that's where you see a lot of his worst moments. Okay. So I'm very glad you brought this here because this is what I was going to present to you. I think a lot of his issues are very similar to Jaden Daniels. When we're talking about how when Jaden Daniels gets pressured, there's not a lot of pocket movement.

He's not stepping up in the pocket. For the most part, both Jaden Daniels and Bo Nix, when they are pressured, their answer is I'm going to scramble or I'm going to bail from the pocket either backwards or out to either side. And that's how I'm going to try to survive. that's okay if that is combined with some strengths in other areas. And I think this is where the Bo Nix questions start to come. If you're going to be a player who is not as dynamic of,

Bo Nix was a good scramble last year. He's never going to be Jaden Daniels as an athlete. How does that start to play with your ceiling? How does that start to depress it? If you're going to have Bo Nix's physical skill set and you're not going to be somebody who can move around the pocket can step up in the pocket can mitigate pressure. What are we talking about here? And then the other, the biggest difference between them is that Jaden Daniels was one of the

best quarterbacks in the league when blitzed last year. Bo Nix was dead last among quarterbacks with 100 dropbacks when blitzed last year. And so if you're not going to be a creative player from the pocket, you got to win quick up here. And he isn't able to do that at the same clip as a guy like Jaden Daniels. and that's why I think there's just a lot more questions about what his ceiling is and what he can ultimately become. I couldn't agree more. And that's why I think their dropback game, they did not do as much like intermediate stuff as I think that you would want to see from a Sean Peyton offense.

They did a lot of either like, we're going to set up the run and do seven man protection, play action, throw the shit out of the ball down the field, or we're going to get into our POs. We're going to get into some of our screens. We're going to run really basic quick game stick and all that jazz. And I think Bo Nix handles all that stuff well, but you make a great point that I think him bridging the gap to whatever he's going to be moving forward is him being like an intermediate dropback passer from the pocket. And some of that's going to be versus the blitz. Some of it's not. But that has to be where he takes his next progression. Because I do think when you watch him, some of his worst moments are him trying to keep himself on rhythm going from like two to three.

Like where he just doesn't seem like he sets himself up well for whatever the. next thing in structure can be. That's why for as good as he throws that digger out to like Cortland Sutton, it's usually the first thing he's reading. He's not getting back to it backside the way that a lot of the other guys are. He's just throwing it off the rip. Yes. And I think it's funny because Bo Nix had more past attempts in college than any quarterback of all time. And he's not like a hyper talented player from a physical standpoint. And so I think people are going to look at Bo Nick's and they're going to be like, oh, I'm sure he's like a cerebral get through his progressions quarterback and that's not really what Bo Nix is even if he was a good player last year.

And so again, it just kind of gets to how confusing it can be to talk about these guys sometimes because there's a lot of strengths and there's some weaknesses, but they're not in like the quantities that you would expect for somebody with Bo Nix's profile. And so you talked about the pressure stuff in the pocket stuff and the blitz. To me, the areas where it needs to get better. If he's going to take that next step are just when things. get dirty in the pocket, whether that's against the blitz or just pressure period. The Bronco is allowed, I think, the lowest pressure rate in the league last year or it was second.

It was them and the Ravens were like right there. They had a fantastic pass blocking offensive line. When Bo Nix was pressured last year, he was dead last in success rate, dead last in the NFL. If you look at the number without scrambles, so again, kind of talking about that Jaden Daniel's side of this, what are you doing as a passer from the pocket when you're pressured and removing scrambles from the equation? He had a 22% success rate. Since 2020, so the last five years, only two players have been, three players have been lower than that.

Baker Mayfield in 2022, Zach Wilson in 2021, and Justin Fields in 2022. That's it. Those are the only guys with a lower success rate when pressured when you remove scrambles from the equation. And obviously scrambles are a strength of his, but this is an area where if he's going to take a step forward, you need to get better. at dealing with pressure in the pocket as a passer because that's what the elite guys in the league are able to do.

And that little list is a really good way to bring that up because, like, Justin Fields, like, also a good scrambler and good runner. But when you struggle with this thing so badly, if it's going to be that much of a, if it's going to depress the rest of your game that much, then maybe some of the other stuff doesn't matter. So that, I'm glad you brought that up. Like, his ability to find whatever the next answer is under pressure

is probably how he bridges the gap for him, Because again, I think later in the year he did a better job of like if he's standing on his spot and he knows he's throwing the digger out and he knows he's getting pressured, he'll throw it better than he did in like week two or three. But he's not skittish in the way that he was earlier in the season, but he doesn't have contingency plans. Yes. In the way that he's going to need them moving forward. That's such a great way to put it. He's gotten to the point where he's brave enough to play in the pocket as an NFL player. He just can he quickly get himself to whatever the next answer?

is we'll have to find out. I think the general vibe about this rookie quarterback group is that they played well last year. And there's a lot of reasons for optimism moving forward. And going back and watching all of them, it's kind of undeniable. Like every single one of these guys, even if there are still question marks, and I think Caleb Williams is the biggest question, like among all of these guys. I think you can make an argument that his ceiling is higher than a Bo Nix or a Michael Penix because of some of that pocket movement and creativity that those guys allow.

I think that's a fine stance to have, but he's absolutely still the biggest question mark based on what we saw last year. Hopefully with an improvement in situation, he takes a big step. But I think that's still, you're having to talk yourself into that a little bit. All the other guys, even with some of the blemishes, I think it's really hard to not at least think they're going to be capable NFL quarterbacks moving forward. where they end up in the hierarchy considering some of these limitations I think is a worthwhile conversation. But I came away from watching

every single one of these guys and feeling pretty good about what the floor at least is going to be for them moving forward. I absolutely agree. Like I, again, we're basically quibbling just about sealing with most of these guys.

And we can say, you know, Caleb Williams were projecting a lot in terms of what the floor might be, but he was the number one overall pick. I feel decent about that. Now he's with Ben Johnson. But like in terms of all these guys, I would expect them to still be the starting quarterbacks

by the end of their rookie deal, which I think by the end of year one for most rookies, that's not how I feel about guys. It's a lot more of guesswork and it's like, maybe we'll see some stuff I like, some stuff I didn't. But the way that they all played, like I would probably, if I had to lean towards guessing that most of them will be the quarterbacks of their teams by them.

And that just doesn't happen. That doesn't happen with like the majority of an entire quarterback class in the first round. And listen, maybe things take a turn. You know, when you look back at, I think the class that's most comparable to this with the amount of guys drafted in the first round and the collective excitement about it coming into the draft would have been the 2021 group. And if you look at the 2021 group, I don't feel like Zach Wilson or Justin Fields after their rookie years were in this spot where you felt like by the end of their rookie contracts, they'll be the guys. But Mack Jones probably was. And so there's always a chance that this can take a left turn here or there. but I just feel like the strengths that all of these guys are bringing to the table, I'm with you.

I think that I would expect them to be the quarterbacks of their teams like several years from now. And the fact that that could happen with all five of these guys that we've seen play, that just doesn't happen very often. And there's a chance this group really is historic in that way. It's, I remember telling myself so many times during that draft class, there's no way there are six quarterbacks worth the first round pick. And after watching five of them, it's like, maybe, maybe they, maybe they've really were. Of course, we're getting to the end of this and the guy with the most question

marks is the guy playing quarterback for the Bears. It was inevitable. No matter what we thought of them as prospects, no matter all of the other details, it was so easy to predict that we would end up in this place. We were just, everything hinges on Ben Johnson saving our lives here. We'll see if it actually happens. All right, guys, that was very fun. Sincerely appreciate all of you hanging out with us. We'll be back on Monday with our next mailbag. Until then, appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon.