In part one, we saw that Caleb Williams generally struggled as a passer during his rookie season, and part two revealed that most of those struggles came on deeper passes. Today, we’ll continue diving deeper into Williams’ statistical profile to try and figure out where improvement is most needed going forward.
Play Action
Let’s start by looking at how Caleb Williams did on play-action drop backs compared to standard passing plays. Before I present the full data, I want to briefly explain two PFF stats that will be used:
- Big Time Throw. These are best described as a pass with excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field and/or into a tighter window. In other words, these are really good, difficult passes that should result in highly valuable big plays. A higher % here is better.
- Turnover Worthy Play. These include fumbles in the pocket, interceptions thrown, and interceptable passes that were not caught. A lower % here is better.
Both of these stats will admittedly have some subjectivity, but they provide a useful glimpse into how frequently a QB makes a really good play vs. a really bad one.
The table below shows how Williams performed in a wide variety of statistics in play action (orange) vs. other dropbacks (blue), 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. 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.)
