Under Pressure
We’ve already seen that Caleb Williams was under pressure pretty frequently, so how did he hold up when that happened?
The table below shows how Williams performed in a wide variety of statistics when kept clean (blue) vs. pressured (orange), and also includes Williams’ rank (in parentheses) out of 34 total NFL QBs who had at least 250 pass attempts. Information on the spread of all NFL QBs is also provided for each stat. Cells highlighted in green indicate Williams was among the top 25% of QBs in this category, while those in red indicate Williams was in the bottom 25% of QBs. A further explanation of big time throws and turnover worthy plays was given in the play action article; generally, more big-time throws is good, and more turnover-worthy plays is bad. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.
(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)
A few thoughts:
- Like we’ve seen in most of the data sets, Williams was generally a sub-par passer pretty much across the board, ranking below average in accuracy, completion %, and yards/attempt.
- This is particularly worrisome for the times when Williams was kept clean. That’s when good QBs have to make defenses pay, and Williams did not do that in 2024. He will need to going forward.
- I think there’s a case to be made that Williams held up reasonably well under pressure, at least when he got a pass off (we already saw in the fourth volume that his pressure to sack rate was way too high, which doesn’t show up in this table).
- He kept his turnover worthy play percentage very low, which is excellent.
- He also had a really slow time to throw under pressure, which makes sense for a QB who likes to scramble to buy time and make plays downfield. The two closest QBs with times to throw under pressure were Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts, who play a similar style in that regard. Josh Allen (3.95 s) and Jayden Daniels (3.99 s) rounded out the top five in this category, so it’s not a bad place to be.
- Williams’ problem was his poor downfield accuracy; as you can see from his average target depth, he liked to look downfield for big plays when under pressure. As we saw in volume two, he missed those throws too often, which is why his yards/attempt in these situations was so bad. This suggests the problems under pressure were more physical than mental, and starting to hit those throws would make him an extremely dangerous QB.
Against the Blitz
Finally, I want to look specifically at how Williams performed when teams sent extra rushers at him on a blitz.
Much like the table above in the performance under pressure section, the table below shows how he fared in a variety of stats when blitzed (orange) and not blitzed (blue), and also gives context for how he ranked relative to the 34 qualifying NFL QBs. Cells highlighted in green indicate Williams was among the top 25% of QBs in this category, while those in red indicate Williams was in the bottom 25%.
A few thoughts:
- Williams was blitzed at a high rate, which is not surprising for a rookie QB. The four rookies in this sample were blitzed on an average 34% of drop backs, a bit higher than the overall NFL average.
- Overall, Williams did fairly well against the blitz; his blitzed sample is the first time we’ve actually seen a decent amount of green from him.
- His accuracy and completion percentage dropped significantly, but his yards/attempt and big time throw rates went up, his turnover worthy play rate was much better, and his sack rate stayed steady (to be fair, the sack rate was consistently too high, it was just an equal problem when not blitzed).
- I do find it noteworthy that Williams’ time to throw didn’t change significantly from when he was not blitzed to when he was. One way to help bring the sack rates down is to get the ball out faster, especially when blitzed.
- I will be curious to see in 2025 how often teams blitz Williams. Based on his 2024 performance, less often might be better, but this could look significantly different in year 2 with a new offense, and I’m guessing defensive coordinators will look to test Caleb early to see how he holds up.
Lessons Learned
Here’s a quick recap of the main takeaways from today:
- Caleb Williams struggled as a passer in 2024, and this shows up in most samples regardless of how you parse the data.
- Overall, he did reasonably well when pressured, though his downfield accuracy issues really showed up here. His blitzed performance was also reasonably solid.
- If Williams can improve his performance when in a clean pocket in 2025 while keeping the solid pressured and/or blitzed production, he will be a quality quarterback.
