Watching Caleb Williams play football is like watching a Fast and Furious movie. Most of the time it’s just constant action, unnecessary twists, and utter confusion as to how any of what you just saw makes sense. The other times, though, you’re watching something really exciting and you just want to see what happens next.
Make no mistake about it. I’m not asking if Williams is good at football? He clearly is. The question has become, “Can he become one of the best quarterbacks in the league?”
Success Rate by Route
Route Percentage
Williams came into the league with the highest ceiling of any quarterback prospect in recent memory. The arm talent is undeniable and the creativity outside of the pocket is insane. The ability to operate at his own pace and dictate how a game is played rather than react to what the defense is doing is a trait you simply cannot teach. The problem is that he’ll operate at his own pace way too often. If Williams stuck to the script a bit more, we might be talking about him as a top ten quarterback.
I want to preface this next statement by saying Williams makes plays that only a handful of quarterbacks can actually make. At times, he sorta reminds me of a taller Kyler Murray with better arm talent and a system that is genuinely built for him to thrive. Ben Johnson’s offense is so intentional about routes, timing, and where the ball should go. The reason Williams struggles is because he’d rather hunt the spectacular play than execute the routine one.
His 66.7% zone success rate and 49.7% man success are the easiest indicators of an inconsistent quarterback who struggles with accuracy. When he attacks zone coverage with an open receiver, he sticks to the play a bit more. When he has to throw guys open in man coverage, I don’t know if it’s a trust issue or a skill issue, but the connection just isn’t there. When Williams has to throw receivers open before they break and trust his anticipation to beat man coverage he can be a full second late getting the ball out. He locks onto receivers sometimes and completely ignores his second read, then he scrambles around and makes an impossible cross-body throw and you’re like “oh.. okay i guess that works!”
What’s weird is, it’s not like he can’t hit his throws, he’s just always making the throws more difficult or struggling to put some touch on his passes.
Success Rate Heat Map
The “other” route is the biggest number that jumps off the chart. A 17.2% “other” route percentage means Williams was constantly scrambling and his receivers were just finding open space wherever they could. I call it backyard football. Williams is a guy who really marches to the beat of his own drum. His 25.3% success rate on those plays is expectedly bad but the volume tells you how often the play broke down before it had a chance to develop.
Williams threw from outside of the pocket at the second-highest rate of any quarterback charted so far. That kind of play style is to be expected with him, but his success rate among quarterbacks charted so far at just 40.6%. That’s the worst number by a pretty decent margin. To give you context,
Caleb is a big game hunter who loves to take his shots downfield. His mid-deep zone success rate of 70.6% is really good and his deep passes to the left side of the field are solid. But Caleb’s all or nothing approach left his success rate map looking pretty bad in comparison to other QBs. He was dead last in intermediate success among the twelve quarterbacks charted. That puts him behind Aaron Rodgers, JJ McCarthy, and Shedeur Sanders. The intermediate game was a nightmare for Williams in 2025. For a quarterback with his arm talent those numbers should be better and they were better coming out of college where evaluators raved about his ability to layer throws with touch and velocity.
The short game is where things get genuinely frustrating to watch. His 70.5% success rate on throws 0-9 yards is second-worst among the twelve quarterbacks charted. Too many times he throws a pass over a receiver’s head from a completely clean pocket. He needs to take a little juice off his throws sometimes and trust the play design to do the work.
The good news is that when Williams is operating within structure, he can be really clean. His 85.4% on flat routes and 76.7% on checkdowns show a quarterback who can execute the easy stuff when he commits to it. His curl success rate of 76.7% and slant success rate of 69.6% are both solid marks. The out route at 72.6% is genuinely good. When Ben Johnson’s offense flows the way it’s designed to, Williams looks like a top ten quarterback. The problem is he abandons structure far too often and goes hunting for the home run play instead of taking the single that’s right in front of him.
The ceiling here is still as high as anyone in the league. If Williams can commit to the structure of the offense in year three and let the creativity come out naturally, he could get to the same level as Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes.
Me after watching every 2025 Caleb Williams dropback. pic.twitter.com/3vHsOlzlpd
— Alfredo Brown (@AlfredoABrown) July 3, 2026
