The Chicago Bears made Caleb Williams the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. That was the expected outcome. There wasn’t a single voice of dissent. Few top prospects achieve the level of consensus that Williams did as a former Heisman winner with all the traits scouts covet in a modern quarterback.
The standard-bearer for the QB position right now is Patrick Mahomes. Every draft pick is a more or less desperate attempt to replicate the magic of Kansas City’s three-time Super Bowl MVP. Many thought Williams might actually achieve it — or something approximating Mahomes’ brilliance.
It’s not hard to find the similarities on paper. Williams is a nutty athlete, comfortable extending plays outside the pocket and creating passing lanes on the fly. He operates well under pressure and generates some of the easiest ‘wow’ throws of any quarterback in the NFL. All the college tape suggested that Williams was a special prospect.
So far, however, it has been tough sledding.
Williams can evade tackles, but it’s hard to operate efficiently behind one of the worst offensive lines in football, no matter your capacity for navigating pressure. Mahomes has benefitted from the immense stability of Kansas City’s depth chart. The Bears are a team in flux, not yet able to build a truly load-bearing supporting cast around Williams.
There’s still plenty of reason to believe in Williams, but we have now seen enough to doubt his billing as ‘Patrick Mahomes 2.0.’ In fact, there’s another rookie threatening to steal Williams’ crown before he even puts it on.
The NFL Draft is all about circumstances. So many quarterbacks are ruined (or made) by the teams that select them. It’s too early to say the Bears have ruined Williams — in fact, he often looks good despite the rampant incompetence around him — but there’s no doubt that Chicago was a less than ideal landing spot.
On the other hand, Jayden Daniels appears to have struck gold in a Washington Commanders uniform. And vice versa. He couldn’t have asked for a better offensive coordinator than Kliff Kingsbury, nor a better pass-catching corps than Terry McLaurin, Jamison Crowder, and Olamide Zaccheaus. The Commanders, meanwhile, are sure glad they ended up picking second.
The No. 2 pick is running away with Rookie of the Year honors, and he’s doing so on a winning team in a highly competitive division. There is a rookie QB generating Mahomes comps in league circles, according to NFL insider James Palmer, and it’s Daniels. Not Williams.
It’s hard to overstate how impressive Daniels has been out of the gate. He’s electric with his arm and with his legs, constantly improvising outside the pocket and uncorking off-angle, high-difficulty passes that drop gently into his receivers’ hands. Very Mahomes-esque.
Perhaps the most Mahomesian of Daniels’ attributes this season, however, has been the clutch gene. He just continues to come through late in games, including this 52-yard Hail Mary to topple Williams’ Bears.
In the last two weeks alone, Daniels has thrown a game-winning touchdown with six seconds left in regulation to beat Philadelphia and led a game-winning drive in OT to beat the Falcons (and secure Washington’s postseason spot).
The man is cool as a cucumber under pressure, which can’t really be taught. Daniels has that special knack for late-game heroics, and he’s continually elevating Washington above the competition as a result. That should translate well to the postseason stage, where the Commanders will appear in Daniels’ first season at the commands.
We shouldn’t write off Caleb Williams this early in his career, but with Daniels outperforming him in every meaningful metric — including Ws — it’s hard not to anoint the LSU product as Mahomes’ potential successor for the title of ‘best NFL quarterback.’
