Leading into the 2024 NFL Draft, Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel and former NFL quarterback Kurt Benkert are breaking down the quarterback class.
On Thursday, Manziel and Benkert ranked the top-six QB prospects and talked about Caleb Williams' fit with the Bears. Today, the focus is on Williams as a player and how he'll fare in the NFL.
Let's get into the inevitable No. 1 pick's NFL future.
Johnny Manziel
You hear all this stuff — painted nails, this and that — but the one thing that I know about Caleb Williams: He won the Heisman Trophy, went back to school and had another stellar year with USC. Whether his team did everything it wanted to do as a whole is irrelevant, because this guy's the best quarterback in the draft.
Is he going to be able to quickly iron out some of those little footwork things that are engrained to spread quarterbacks? Getting your feet out quick, getting the ball to the bubble to quick hitch outside — all the things he's been accustomed to doing in Lincoln Riley's offense since he's been in college.
I think he'll clean that up and be able to get to a point where he gets into training camp, gets more reps under center and you'll really know by the beginning of camp and into the preseason what he's going to look like.
My question: Is Chicago ready for this? Because at the end of the day, over the course of the history of what the Bears have shown — I'm not pointing out anything that's not blatantly obvious in front of every single Chicago Bears fan — but your ownership hasn't gotten it done.
To be frank, you can't mess this up. It's so teed up with two top-10 picks in this draft, which has great talent. If you mess this up, you simply don't have hope moving forward and need to figure something else out about who's running your football operations.
Kurt Benkert
There's probably not a better situation for a number one overall pick to walk into.
I'm excited to see how different Williams looks come preseason to what we saw at the end of last season at USC. Coming from that Air Raid scheme in college, it's way different to what you're asked to do in the NFL in how you distribute the ball, your timing, the kind of the tempo of your drops.
Assuming he goes to the Bears like everyone thinks, I'm excited for Week 1 of preseason and what he looks like before he even throws the ball. I think that's going to dictate how much success he has in Year 1 more so than anything, because he has weapons around him if he goes there.
I think all the things that we question about Williams are things that can be cleaned up rather quickly. It's funny — he is going into a situation that I believe Justin Fields wished he had, with the weapons, with the talent.
I think Chicago's coaching staff is getting there, and I think the Bears offense is perfectly set for Williams to slide into. The toughest thing for Williams is that the division's tough to play in, and quarterbacks are measured by success of winning divisions and getting wins.
