Here’s a breakdown of the potential first-round quarterbacks ahead of the 2024 NFL Draft.
1. Caleb Williams, USC
Williams began his career at Oklahoma as a backup to start his freshman season but quickly took over for Spencer Rattler, throwing 21 touchdowns in less than eight starts. Williams then transferred to USC where he set the college football world on fire with 4,537 yards, 42 touchdowns, and just five picks. He won the Heisman in what would ultimately be his best season. USC’s offensive line offered less protection in 2023 and their already weak defense found ways to get worse, leading Williams to play hero-ball for stretches of his final season. This led to some of the minor red flags in his game popping up, like his desire to play out of structure. Per Pro Football Focus, his Turnover Worthy Play rate of 1.8 percent in 2022 doubled in 2023. His pressure-to-sack rate also rose significantly.
On the other hand, the Superman mentality is also part of what made Williams so great in college. He may have forced too many plays in his final season, resulting in more turnovers and sacks per dropback, but he also improved his Big Time Throw rate and yards per attempt. Williams even ran for 11 touchdowns in his final season, one more than his previous career-high. For most quarterbacks, fleeing clean pockets and making overly risky plays in college is a death sentence at the next level. Zach Wilson is the ultimate example of this set of flaws. Williams, by all accounts, is the exception to the rule, earning him more than his fair share of Patrick Mahomes comparisons.
Williams is the complete package as a quarterback. He has elite arm strength, can make any throw, reads defenses well, and is plenty mobile. Taking out yards lost on sacks, Williams ran for over 1,500 yards and scored 27 times on the ground in his career. Among Power Five quarterbacks, he finished top-five in passing yards, PFF grade, and yards per attempt on deep throws in 2023. Now he is going to a team that has D.J. Moore, Keenan Allen, and maybe even top-10 rookie pick Rome Odunze. Williams is easily the top dynasty quarterback in the class.
2. Drake Maye, North Carolina
A two-year starter at UNC, Maye was good in his final season, throwing for 3,608 yards and 24 scores. His best work, however, came in 2022, when he threw for 4,321 yards and 38 touchdowns. As a sophomore, Maye finished top-five among Power Five passers in PFF passing grade and their Big Time Throw rate. He was top-15 in EPA per dropback. Even in his down year, Maye still excelled in the advanced numbers. He remained inside the top 10 quarterbacks in both passing grade and BTT rate and snuck in the top 20 in EPA per play.
Maye’s calling is as a deep thrower. In the past two years, he has ranked first and second in the country in PFF passing grade on throws 20 or more yards downfield. That has come on the sixth-most deep attempts in both seasons. Though deep throwing may not be in vogue in the majors right now, middle-of-the-field attempts are. In 2023, Maye’s down year, he led all FBS passers in PFF grade on throws between the hashes.
I'm all for bringing in someone with a fresh perspective, but I think McDaniels + Drake Maye would turn the #Patriots around very quickly
— Taylor Kyles (@tkyles39) January 17, 2024
Maye has "put the ball where I want" arm talent over the middle, consistently uses his legs to stay on schedule, and for all the wild (and… https://t.co/VwDwtLk2pL pic.twitter.com/qpOVCZnMsv
Maye has a cannon that is more dialed in than most quarterback prospects with arm strength as a selling point. He’s also a great runner, posting 1,481 yards and 16 scores on the ground in his two seasons as a starter. Maye isn’t perfect. His footwork gets sloppy at times and his throwing motion isn’t as refined as other prospects. But those are relatively minor concerns given his strong body of work. The common comparison for Maye has been Josh Allen given Maye’s 6-foot-4, 223-pound stature and arm talent. Though he’s unlikely to ever reach that comp, it speaks to how high his ceiling is.
3. Jayden Daniels, LSU
Daniels is once again the overwhelming favorite to be drafted second overall and yet he’s my third quarterback. We’ll get to the negatives eventually, but first, the Heisman winner deserves plenty of praise. Starting with his allure from a fantasy angle, Daniels is an elite runner.
Notable college fantasy points per game from only rushing production in final year:
— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) April 18, 2024
Lamar Jackson: 20.6
Jalen Hurts: 17.8
Jayden Daniels: 14.5
Kyler Murray: 12.3
Anthony Richardson: 10
Dak Prescott: 9.1
Drake Maye: 8.2
Justin Fields: 8
Deshaun Watson: 7.8
Caleb Williams: 6.7
Among Power Five quarterbacks since 2016, PFF has Daniels charted with the third-highest mark in missed tackles force per carry and the sixth-best yards after contact per attempt (min. 100 carries). He’s the career record holder in rushing yards, missed tackles forced, and explosive runs, though it’s much easier for a five-year player to claim the top spot in any career stats. Daniels may not rival Lamar Jackson as a runner, but he should match the best numbers a player like Kyler Murray has put up. Murray went for 819 yards and 11 scores in his second NFL season.
Daniels has enough arm strength to make any throw and is especially good when looking deep. PFF had him with a 45 percent Big Time Throw rate on deep attempts in his final season. That was over 10 percent higher than any of the other potential first-round quarterbacks. He did that while creating one Turnover Worthy Play. Daniels led all Power Five quarterbacks in completion rate and YPA on deep shots. Daniels is a big-play machine both through the air and on the ground. He’s also more fundamentally sound from a clean pocket than most mobile quarterback prospects.
The glaring issue for Daniels is how he handles pressure. He takes sacks at an alarming rate.
Some argue that a problem with Pressure to Sack % is it doesn't account for scrambles. I asked a PFF Data Analyst, who informed me P2S% does account for scrambles.
— Zachary Krueger (@ZK_FFB) March 22, 2024
I pulled up QB pressures and removed scrambles when pressured to get P2S w/o scrambles to see what it looks like. pic.twitter.com/qAz0yL7twD
Zach wrote more about his pressure-to-sack rate here. No one in the general vicinity of Daniels on this chart has found success in the NFL, with Levis being an unknown so far. Daniels also had the highest rate of throws short of the first down marker when under pressure among the big six quarterbacks in 2023.
Daniels is an elite scrambler. When he’s on the move, defenders simply can’t contain him. But he also leans on his legs far too much. He fled nearly 10 percent of his clean pockets and took off on a quarter of his pressured dropbacks. Those numbers are even more concerning when you see some of the brutal hits he takes because he refuses to go down. Daniels is going to put up gaudy rushing numbers in part because of his propensity to take off. That will get fantasy points on the board, but it may also get him in hot water with his coaches. If he doesn’t start sliding more often, it will also get him injured. Daniels is what would happen if Justin Fields was a meaningfully better thrower. Is that enough to overcome the disastrous sack-taking? I don’t know.
4. J.J. McCarthy, Michigan
McCarthy is this year’s “but QB wins” prospect, and the Michigan homers pumping up J.J.’s stock based on dubs are probably right, at least partially. McCarthy’s .964 win percentage as a starter is the highest in the past 50 years. He only lost one game in his entire collegiate career, a 51-45 barn burner in the 2022 playoffs against TCU. McCarthy and the Wolverines would go on to win the National Championship in 2023. Conversely, McCarthy’s box scores were wildly underwhelming. He threw for 5,710 yards and 44 touchdowns in both of his starting seasons combined. Bailey Zappe threw for more yards and touchdowns in 2021 alone. McCarthy threw more than 35 passes in a game twice and peaked at 37 attempts. When dividing McCarthy’s throws into subsets—under pressure, middle of the field, etc.—the sample sizes become so small that they are often hard to work with. There’s a lot we still don’t know about the 21-year-old passer.
However, what we have seen from him has been great. In 2023, the Wolverines were second among Power Five teams in dropback EPA and McCarthy finished 10th in that cohort in PFF passing grade and yards per attempt. Looking at some of the harder situations a quarterback can be put in, McCarthy still comes out on top. He was top-10 in YPA, PFF passing grade, and Big Time Throw rate under pressure in 2023. On third and seven or more yards to go, McCarthy was top-five in the country in both success rate and EPA per play. McCarthy doesn’t have the biggest arm, but he is more than capable of stepping into his throws and putting some zip on the ball. He still needs to dial in his accuracy to better hit receivers in stride and on frame when, though that’s to be expected for a player with so few reps in college compared to the likes of Bo Nix and Michael Penix.
With McCarthy, so much of his success in college was being a part of the system. His team didn’t ask him to throw much, he was often playing with a lead, and was balanced by a strong ground attack. It’s fair to ask whether he’ll always be a system quarterback or if he can ever become the system, a player who bends the game to his will and single-handedly controls the outcome of contests. While McCarthy may not have been allowed to transcend the system, he did crush all expectations within it. Doing that at 19 and 20 years old should give us some confidence that there’s a substantial ceiling with McCarthy, even if he wasn’t asked to show it in college.
5. Bo Nix, Oregon
Nix spent the first three years of his collegiate career playing some pretty uninspiring football at Auburn before revitalizing his career at Oregon. A lot changed after he left Auburn. Some of those things were related to his play while others were based on scheme. Nix’s completion rate, which was below 60 percent at Auburn, soared past 70 percent in his final two seasons. This was partially because of an increase in throws behind the line of scrimmage. But Nix improving his adjusted competition rate on throws 10+ yards downfield by over 15 percent made a massive impact on his bottom line as well.
His low aDOT of 6.8 and reliance on screens have led many to believe Nix can’t make intermediate or deep throws. While they do juice his counting stats, Nix was elite even when taking away screens and RPOs.
I removed screens and RPOs for the QB prospects. Bo Nix still has the 3rd lowest average depth of throw of the 47 qualifiers, but some of the best QBs in the NFL have laughably low aDOTs.
— Hayden Winks (@HaydenWinks) April 10, 2024
Nix was 2nd in success rate here. pic.twitter.com/Os7KBCeLNe
In his final season, Nix finished top-five in adjusted completion rate and PFF passing grade on throws 20 or more yards downfield. Conversely, he threw deep on just 11 percent of his total attempts. That ranked 129th among 142 qualified quarterbacks. Nix executed Oregon’s system well, but the system also made his life extremely easy. Playing behind PFF’s No. 1 graded pass-blocking unit also helped, as did throwing to PFF’s No. 2 graded receiving room.
Nix doesn’t have an elite arm but is well beyond the threshold of NFL-caliber arm strength. He has proven capable of doing what’s asked of him at a high level, though it remains to be seen if he can be a true difference-maker. If he hits at the next level, I could see Nix becoming a Tua Tagovailoa-like point guard but with a greater ability to run and work out of structure.
6. Michael Penix Jr., Washington
Penix is the final quarterback I see as worth a roster spot in single-QB dynasty leagues. He checks a lot of the boxes at a high level, but things get concerning the deeper you look. Take, for example, his otherworldly pressure-to-sack rate of 6.5 percent. No quarterback prospect has come close to matching that mark in recent years. At the same time, Penix managed a below-average first-down rate on pressured dropbacks among drafted quarterbacks since 2015.
First down rate and sack rate under pressure.
— zwk (@ZWKfootball) April 3, 2024
Right: good at avoiding sacks
Up: good at picking up first downs (scrambling or passing) when under pressure pic.twitter.com/WNbgF2Al0n
That is to say that Penix doesn’t take sacks but fails to make much of his second chance after avoiding the negative outcome. On early downs, living to fight another play isn’t so bad. On later downs, the difference between a sack and an incompletion or a completion short of the sticks is often meaningless. Penix converted his third and fourth-down dropbacks into first downs when pressured at 22 percent, easily the lowest of any of the six first-round hopefuls.
Another stunning contradiction in Penix’s profile is the contrast between his athleticism and his use of that trait. After skipping the combine drills, Penix blazed a 4.58 40-yard dash at his Pro Day. That’s above the 95th percentile for a quarterback. He scrambled on less than two percent of his dropbacks, negating much of the value of that speed. Penix has a lengthy injury history that includes two torn ACLs and two shoulder injuries. This likely plays a major role in his reluctance to take off.
As a thrower, the high-level numbers are strong. The Huskies ranked 13th in EPA per dropback as a team in 2023. Penix averaged 9.2 adjusted yards per attempt in his final season. He got there by taking deep shots (20+ aDOT) at the fifth-highest rate among Power Five quarterbacks last year. Despite the volume being there, Penix only ranked 20th in completion rate and 18th in YPA on these throws. He relied heavily on his trio of NFL wide receivers to win contested catches, which they did without fail. No quarterback earned more yards or touchdowns on contested throws than Penix last year. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in its own right. It is, however, more concerning when looking at how poorly Penix charted on several different deep throws.
Michael Penix's charting profile is up!
— Derrik Klassen (@QBKlass) April 10, 2024
It's bad.
Really tough to stomach this kind of profile given Penix's age/medical history and the environment he was playing in. There's still stuff to like, but hard to see a first round QB. https://t.co/OijEiIailX pic.twitter.com/ZAVQCIwOjt
Per the film watchers, Penix doesn’t appear to have the accuracy necessary to turn 50/50 throws into 60/40 odds at the next level, indicating his receivers were doing him plenty of favors on those throws in college. Penix’s counting stats and efficiency look like those of a future NFL starter. He even has the physical tools to be an above-average thrower and a plus runner. The tape tells a different story and, if you dig deep enough, the nerdy metrics start to agree.
