How to Break a Young Quarterback in Three Easy Steps
NFL teams are breaking quarterbacks faster than they can build them up—most notably in Chicago, where Caleb Williams is struggling and the Bears have few answers. What are the common threads from these situations? And how can teams fix their mistakes before it’s too late?
The first half of Caleb Williams’s rookie season has been tough. Outside of a promising three-game stretch in late September and early October, the first pick hasn’t played well and appears to be getting less comfortable as the season goes on. The Bears haven’t won in a month, the offense hasn’t scored a touchdown in 23 consecutive possessions, and while this drought hasn’t cost Williams his starting job (yet), it did get offensive coordinator Shane Waldron fired on Tuesday. Waldron’s offense was certainly to blame for a lot of the Bears’ struggles—more on that later—but Williams has played a role, too. Sunday’s dreadful home loss to the Patriots was the 22-year-old’s worst game of the season. He took nine sacks and managed just 120 passing yards on 30 attempts—a stat line that fits with the overall trend of his season. Williams is taking sacks at an alarming rate, missing throws, and sinking to the bottom of the league’s statistical ranks.
Caleb Williams statistical ranks, 2024
The quarterback billed as a generational prospect is off to a generationally disappointing start. But Williams isn’t the only young quarterback who’s failing to meet expectations. Look around the league, and you’ll find a number of those cases. Of the 15 quarterbacks drafted in the first round since 2021, eight have either been benched or lost their jobs permanently. The only two non-rookies in that group who haven’t been through such an ordeal are Trevor Lawrence and C.J. Stroud. All of Lawrence’s 2021 draft mates—Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Justin Fields, and Mac Jones—are on their second teams. Kenny Pickett, the lone quarterback taken in the first round in 2022, is now a backup in Philadelphia. And Bryce Young and Anthony Richardson were both benched this season. Lawrence and Stroud are the success stories—but they aren’t exactly thriving either. Lawrence, a fourth-year pro, is 2-7 in his starts this season, and Stroud has been a below-average quarterback based on expected points added, success rate, QBR, and just about every other passing metric.
The kids are not all right. Jayden Daniels and Brock Purdy are the only starting quarterbacks under 25 who have a positive EPA average on the season, per TruMedia. The other seven are toiling away on flawed offenses.
NFL starters under 25, 2024 stats
This shouldn’t be surprising. Young quarterbacks tend to be bad as they get the time and in-game repetition needed to adjust to the rigors of the NFL. But the issues this group is facing go beyond your typical growing pains. They aren’t getting enough organizational support. They’ve been thrown into shoddily built offenses that make playing quarterback more difficult. Even guys like Lawrence and Stroud have had their growth stunted and production suppressed as they’ve tried to overcome bad offensive environments.
The most levelheaded take on this problem may have come from Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell, who is doing his best to revive Sam Darnold’s career after the quarterback experienced years of coaching malpractice. “I just think, as a whole, there’s not enough emphasis put on the organization’s role in the development of the [quarterback] position,” O’Connell told Rich Eisen in September. “I believe that organizations fail young quarterbacks before young quarterbacks fail organizations. … They need the support, they need the teammates around them, they need the systems in place to ultimately try to maximize who they are and what their potential is.”
There aren’t many of those systems in the NFL right now. Certainly not in Chicago, where Williams is regressing and developing concerning habits. Not in Houston or Jacksonville either, as their quarterbacks’ struggles offer glimpses into what Williams’s future could be if the Bears don’t correct the mistakes they’ve made to this point. Teams across the league are breaking quarterbacks faster than they can build them up. And while every quarterback’s developmental journey is unique—and impacted by an endless number of variables—there are some recurring mistakes franchises are making along the way. If there’s anything we can learn from this collection of recent failures, it’s that there are three general steps that can lead to breaking a young quarterback.
Step 1: Hire the wrong offensive coordinator.
The offensive coordinator is always the first person to be blamed when a young quarterback plays poorly. That was the case this week in Chicago, where Waldron’s firing marked the first major change to the offense this season. Following Waldron’s ouster, various members of the team took turns throwing their former coordinator under the bus. Veteran receiver Keenan Allen said Waldron was “too nice” and “fell into a trap of letting things go [and] not holding people accountable.” DJ Moore said Waldron took too long to adjust in games. When asked what newly appointed offensive coordinator Thomas Brown would bring to the offense, head coach Matt Eberflus said “creativity” and “working the guys into open positions.” He also mentioned improved communication on game day as a potential area of improvement. Was there anything Waldron did well?
Perhaps Chicago should have seen this coming back in March when Jaxon Smith-Njigba planted the first red flag of the Waldron era. The Seahawks receiver, who played for Waldron last season in Seattle, was asked what Bears fans could expect from the coach. “Umm, uh … pfff, eh, this is live?” Smith-Njigba said before settling on “Good luck to y’all” and “He’s a great person.”
Smith-Njigba’s hesitation makes sense once you watch Waldron’s work as a play caller. The former member of Sean McVay’s staff tried to build his own version of the Rams’ scheme in Seattle and Chicago, and he failed in both cases. He couldn’t get the run game off the ground in either spot, which led to issues in the play-action pass game. Blending those two elements is the foundational concept of that system—McVay refers to it as the “illusion of complexity”—and Waldron couldn’t figure out the right mix. The Seahawks offenses were still fairly productive thanks to Geno Smith’s prowess as a dropback passer, but a rookie like Williams doesn’t have the experience to operate in such a fashion.
Chicago’s run game was mediocre under Waldron, and it got even worse when he used the staple concepts of the McVay offense. For instance, the Bears rank 26th in EPA per attempt and 22nd in success rate when they run from under center with three receivers on the field. That would be more tolerable if those inefficient runs were setting up a productive play-action pass game, but that hasn’t been the case. Williams ranks 32nd in EPA per dropback and 29th in success rate when using play-action, per TruMedia. No matter what you think of the job Waldron has done, one thing is undeniable: He hasn’t built the type of offense the team expected when it hired a coach from the McVay tree.
Now the Bears hope that Brown, who also worked under McVay in Los Angeles before a one-year stint as the Panthers’ offensive coordinator, can figure out how to operate this system as intended. He won’t be making significant changes to the offense—he’ll just try to run a better version of it than Waldron. “That was the best decision that we have in the building because you can’t make that big of a shift during the course of midseason,” Eberflus said of handing the reins over to Brown this week. “We’re still running our same type of verbiage, but the creativity and the knowledge that Thomas has—working with Sean [McVay] and working with the people he’s worked with—is very beneficial.”
It’s too late for Eberflus to fully rectify the mistake he made in picking Waldron in the first place, and at this stage, it seems unlikely that he’ll be around to pick Chicago’s next offensive coordinator. But admitting defeat and moving on quickly was the right move. We can look to Jacksonville and Houston for cautionary tales of teams that held on to bad offensive coordinators for too long.
The Texans have encountered similar offensive issues to the Bears under former Kyle Shanahan assistant Bobby Slowik. Stroud’s talent has masked major problems with the scheme—starting with the run game—but opposing defenses have done a better job of exploiting those weak points of late. Stroud has more third-and-long dropbacks than any other quarterback this season, and he’s been under pressure on 53 percent of those snaps. The Texans don’t run a complex protection scheme, and the Shanahan system doesn’t typically allow the quarterback to make significant changes before the snap. So opposing defenses have been able to break Houston’s protection rules early and often, thanks to the Texans’ problems on first and second down. These issues started over the back half of last season and played a big role in the team’s playoff loss to Baltimore. Houston’s offensive line was decimated by injuries, and it was assumed that better health would lead to improvements. But the line has been arguably worse so far this season, and Slowik hasn’t found any answers in the run game or in pass protection. That’s put pressure on Stroud, and we’re just now seeing it create cracks in his game.
Meanwhile, Doug Pederson’s loyalty to offensive coordinator Press Taylor has been a point of contention for him in two cities now. He was fired by the Eagles after trying to promote Taylor, and Pederson has kept him as the OC in Jacksonville despite the growing staleness of the offense and the stifling of Lawrence’s development. Lawrence has been heavily criticized this season for not doing more to elevate the team and making too many poor plays in crunch time, but when he was out with a shoulder injury on Sunday, we got to see what the offense looks like with another quarterback under center … and it was one of the worst games in the Jaguars’ 29-year existence. Jones threw two interceptions, the offense gained just 143 yards, and Jacksonville lost 12-7. Taylor’s scheme is a difficult one to play in, especially if it’s not being coached well. And like Stroud, Lawrence has been able to mask only so many of his team’s issues.
Step 2: Give the wrong offensive coordinator the wrong players.
“If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.”
Waldron can probably empathize with that famous quote from Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells. When he uttered the line, Parcells was locked in a power struggle with the Patriots’ front office over how much input he’d have on roster decisions. It’s hard to say what kind of sway Waldron had when Chicago was piecing its offense together for this season, but judging by the final product, it couldn’t have been much. The Bears have a talented offensive group, but it does not fit a McVay-style system.
This offseason, general manager Ryan Poles prioritized upgrades to the skill positions, bringing in Allen via trade, drafting receiver Rome Odunze ninth, and signing running back D’Andre Swift to a multiyear contract. Surrounding Williams with talented receivers and a pass catching back made plenty of sense, but those acquisitions were made with seemingly no regard for how they’d fit within the offense the team intended to run.
McVay-style schemes are known for deploying three-receiver sets. But McVay also utilizes condensed formations to get defenses into looks that can be exploited in the play-action passing game—and receivers are expected to block in the run game. While Allen, Odunze, and Moore make quite the receiving trio, none of them are known for their run blocking. Moore is the best of the three, based on Pro Football Focus’s run-blocking grade, and he’s tied for 43rd among receivers this season. Odunze and Allen rank outside the top 110. At its peak, the Rams offense centered a strong offensive line and a receiving corps that both blocked well and turned tough catches over the middle into explosive gains. Robert Woods, Cooper Kupp, and now Puka Nacua have all fit that bill better than a pair of McVay’s khakis. Moore, Odunze, and Allen, however, don’t. So Waldron couldn’t get that type of offense up and running, but I’m not sure McVay himself would have been able to do it with these pieces.
Even Swift is a poor fit for this scheme. He’s not a decisive north-south runner, and he’s been off to a rough start after signing a three-year, $24 million contract in the offseason. He ranks near the bottom in Next Gen Stats’ rush yards over expected metric, which uses tracking data to assess how many yards a running back should be expected to gain on a given play based on the quality of his blocking and the positioning of the defense. Waldron didn’t do a good job drawing up run plays, but his lead back hasn’t taken the available yardage either.
The Bears have moved the ball more effectively when they’ve spread things out and gotten away from the foundational concepts of a McVay scheme. They rank in the top 10 in total EPA, EPA per attempt, and success rate on run-pass options and lead the NFL in success rate on runs against a light box, per Sports Info Solutions. Williams has been at his best when going to quick passing concepts (throwing under 15 air yards) rather than the deep and intermediate pass plays the McVay offense is known for.
Caleb Williams passing splits by air yards
It’s easy to pin all of Chicago’s problems on Waldron. Another coach, using a different approach, may have gotten more out of this talented group. But the front office didn’t hire another coach. It hired Waldron and asked him to run a certain scheme while giving him an incompatible roster.
This is another area where we’ve seen teams fail. Houston has tried to plug its two best, and highest-paid, linemen—Laremy Tunsil and Tytus Howard—into the Shanahan scheme, and they haven’t been a good fit. Shanahan offenses typically rely on smaller, quicker linemen, not the bigger, more powerful blockers the Texans invested in. And there’s a clear lack of chemistry between this group, which has led to botched combo blocks in the run game and busts in pass protection. Plus, after adding Stefon Diggs to a receiving corps that already featured Nico Collins and Tank Dell, Slowik moved away from last year’s identity—which was built around heavier personnel—to get the best players on the field. Houston’s offense is now using less play-action and creating fewer easy throws for Stroud.
The Jaguars have also poured resources into the receiver position in recent years, but they’ve brought in players who aren’t known for their attention to detail—Calvin Ridley, Gabe Davis, Evan Engram, Brian Thomas Jr.—to run a timing-based West Coast offense. It’s no surprise the passing game has been plagued by miscommunication throughout Pederson’s tenure as coach.
When the players around the quarterback aren’t being put in a position to succeed, it makes the quarterback’s job a hell of a lot harder.
Step 3: Overwhelm the quarterback.
The last thing a team wants to do is overwhelm a young quarterback, but a faulty offense that isn’t working as designed will eventually do that. A bad run game inevitably leads to more obvious passing situations, which can be hell for a quarterback who doesn’t have experience with the blitzes and coverage disguises that defensive coordinators can throw at them. A lack of explosive plays stretches out drives and increases the likelihood of an obvious passing situation even more. Throw in a penalty problem—Chicago is tied for the league lead in false-start penalties—and you’ve created a very stressful environment.
Given all of the issues with the Bears offense, it should come as no surprise that Williams has been playing under a lot of stress. He has the third-most dropbacks in the league on third-and-long; he ranks dead last in EPA on those plays, per TruMedia; and his 28.8 percent sack rate in those situations is a big reason why. But while Williams has been criticized for running around too much and creating pressure for himself, that’s not the root cause of his sack issue. Almost all of the sacks he’s taken have been in the pocket: 32, compared to just six when he’s been on the move. His average time to sack is just 3.6 seconds, which ranks ninth highest behind names like Jayden Daniels, Patrick Mahomes, and Josh Allen.
If anything, Williams should be going off script more often than he has to this point. And there are other signs that Williams needs to loosen up a bit. He leads the NFL in throwaways, he hasn’t made a turnover-worthy play during the Bears’ three-game losing streak, and he’s hit only one big-time throw over the same span, per PFF. Williams’s problem isn’t that he’s trying to get away with plays that work only on the college level. It’s that he’s trying to cosplay as a veteran quarterback. (1) He’s not experienced enough to do that, and (2) as we’ve already covered, Chicago’s offense is fundamentally broken. The more Williams leans on it, the more sacks he takes.
Williams is averaging 6.44 seconds before he scrambles, per Pro Football Focus. That’s a comically high number that leads the NFL by a comfortable margin. He shouldn’t be hanging around the pocket waiting for a receiver to pop open—he should be willing to cut off a progression early to go into scramble mode, as his more successful draft mates have been wont to do. By trying not to do too much, Williams is inadvertently doing too much.
It’s difficult to blame him for this approach. The Bears aren’t creating explosive plays in the run game, their play-action game doesn’t work, and the receivers aren’t getting open downfield quickly. Williams gives Chicago its best chance to create the big plays it desperately needs without risking a turnover by holding on to the ball. When a reporter asked the rookie what he feels he’s done well this season, he said he’s protected the football. Which is true: He’s tied with Geno Smith for the 11th-best turnover-worthy play rate in the league, per PFF. But Williams is no longer playing like the quarterback we saw at USC. He’s changed his game to adapt to his environment—and it’s been a change for the worse.
Williams isn’t alone. We’ve seen Stroud’s decision-making and accuracy go to shit in Houston’s disjointed offense. Lawrence has developed timing and accuracy issues playing in Jacksonville’s disorganized passing game. And those are just the quarterbacks we can confidently say are above average. There are also unproven guys like Richardson, Drake Maye, and Bo Nix who are struggling to find consistency in less-than-ideal setups. And who knows how failed quarterbacks like Jones, Wilson, or Pickett may have turned out had they landed in situations that didn’t highlight their worst passing traits?
Plenty of teams have shown us how to irreparably break a young quarterback. Williams and the Bears still have time to turn things around—but they can’t afford to keep making the same missteps going forward.
