Summer is always a good time to go back to last year's rookies and review how they performed -- I just did so for the 2024 wide receiver class. For the 2024 quarterback class, though, I needed no excuse. Five of the six first-rounders saw game action last season, and all of them bring fascinating storylines into Year 2. Can Jayden Daniels repeat -- or even improve upon -- his stellar season? What will Caleb Williams look like free of the doomed Matt Eberflus era? What can three starts tell us about Michael Penix Jr.'s sudden rise to QB1 in Atlanta?
It is not an exaggeration to consider this class, which also includes Drake Maye and Bo Nix and J.J. McCarthy in the top 12 picks, on par with the 2018 class that delivered Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, and Baker Mayfield (and Sam Darnold, if we are to believe his career resurgence). Williams, Daniels, Maye and Nix all showed plenty of proof that they'll be long-term starters in the league, and Penix and McCarthy each have reasons to share in such belief.
I asked one pressing question about each of the rising sophomore quarterbacks, then tried my best to answer it.
Jump to a question about:
Daniels | Maye | McCarthy
Nix | Penix | Rattler | Williams
Is it time to panic about Caleb Williams?
With Williams, it is important to begin with a reminder. Watch this third-and-14 late in the season against the Lions.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) June 9, 2025
This is an impossibly difficult throw. I'm not even sure how you teach this throw. Many right-handed quarterbacks make acrobatic, momentum-defining throws moving to their right, which is intuitive -- the throwing arm is still back, and the rotation of the hips and trunk are still involved in generating power for the throw. To access this much velocity, while throwing an accurate ball away from coverage, on the run to the left? That is eye-popping stuff.
It is important to begin here because there have been many poor rookie seasons from early-round quarterbacks in the past several years, and a wide range of career results to follow.
Jared Goff in 2016. Mitchell Trubisky (oh look -- a Bear!) in 2017. Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson and Justin Fields (another Bear!) in 2021. Kenny Pickett in 2022 and Bryce Young in 2023. And now Caleb Williams in 2024.
Among 40 quarterbacks with at least 200 dropbacks last season, Williams ranked 33rd in success rate, 30th in EPA per dropback and 32nd in adjusted net yards per attempt -- pretty rough. Perhaps most concerning? His off-target rate of 21% -- only Anthony Richardson Sr. missed a higher percentage of his throws -- and his sack rate is 10%, which was better than only Will Levis and Deshaun Watson.
But against some of those truly harrowing debut seasons, Williams actually holds up OK. Forty-six rookie first-round quarterbacks have taken at least 200 dropbacks in the past 20 years. Among those 46 seasons, Williams ranked 29th in success rate, 25th in EPA per dropback and 26th in adjusted net yards per attempt -- just below average. His sack rate was still perilously high (43rd), but his off-target rate was much closer to average (29th).
It is easy to feel like the sky is falling after Williams' rookie year, as he failed to reach such high expectations, while the player drafted directly after him (Jayden Daniels) had one of the best rookie seasons in history. But the sky is not falling. It's OK. There are certainly problems, but it's OK.
Let's compare Williams' 2024 to Young's 2023 season, which was so concerning that I thought his career was over before it began -- in fact, I wrote that the door was shut on his career when he was benched in Week 2 of last season. (He would proceed to immediately make me look very stupid, but that is a common enough occurrence it is hardly worth remarking upon here.)
Young makes a particularly good comparison for Williams because there are similar stylistic components to their rookie years. Both took a lot of sacks (in part because of high pressure rates behind bad offensive lines, and in part because they panicked under pressure). Neither threw the ball very far downfield and avoided interceptions in their caution. Both held the football for too long in the pocket and relied on scrambles, increasingly so as the season went on, to account for their deficiencies elsewhere.
On the other hand, 2023 Young is not particularly helpful to understanding 2024 Williams. Young is not physically capable of making that throw against the Lions. Put simply, few quarterbacks are.
You have to sort through a lot of trash -- poorly designed screens, undecipherable pass protection choices, disinterested routes, horrendous game management -- in your dumpster diving, but it's not hard to find more plays like the first from Williams. There's the absurd D'Andre Swift teardrop up the sideline against the Vikings. The across-his-body laser to Rome Odunze in the two-minute drill against the Packers. The hole shot against the Commanders on what should have been the go-ahead drive.
The same preternatural, unteachable stuff that got Williams drafted No. 1 is still there. It's not even that far below the surface.
As such, predicting a huge sophomore leap for Williams is not difficult. If Young can see such rapid growth in his game behind an improved offensive line and in the hands of a competent offensive coaching staff, so can Williams with similar changes. The first objective for new coach Ben Johnson, offensive coordinator Declan Doyle and the rest of that offensive brain trust will be the installation of easy buttons into a Bears offense weirdly devoid of them in 2024. The best training wheels you can attach to an NFL offense are play-action fakes and pre-snap motion. Last season's Bears ranked 30th in play-action rate and 21st in motion rate. (Not for nothing: Johnson's Lions ranked first and fifth last year, respectively.)
Their improvements will hit a ceiling if Williams doesn't personally manage the biggest wart in his current game: the sack rate. He led the league in pressure dropbacks last season with 227, and that raw volume matters. The more a quarterback gets hit, the harder it is to trust his offensive line, and bad pocket habits blossom or worsen. But his 33.5% pressure rate was just above league average, and he was sacked on 30% of his pressures, which again was better than only Levis and Watson last season. This is on him.
Williams' management of pressure was a predictably rookie error. He was accustomed to his play strength and quickness getting him out of trouble unfailingly at the college level, and he quickly discovered the chasm between NFL athletes and college ones. But habits die hard, and it's unlikely he suddenly becomes a dink-and-dunk distributor at the first sign of pressure. You don't get the incredible throws above without risking a few sacks, just as you don't get an omelet without breaking a few eggs. The sack rate should improve, though Williams will remain a high-sack player. So long as the interception rate stays low (maybe not 0.9%, a ridiculously strong number), he will collectively produce a workable number of negative plays. No need to panic.
What's not to love with Jayden Daniels?
What more is there to say about Daniels? Among rookie quarterback seasons over the past 20 years (minimum 200 dropbacks), he ranked third in success rate and sixth in EPA per play. He set the record for rookie rushing yards with 891 on the back of perhaps the best scrambling season of any QB. He scrambled 70 times, which is the most in a single season this century and probably ever. (We don't have the data to distinguish between scrambles and designed runs before 2006.) His 40.76 total EPA collected on scrambles is ranked third to 2022 Justin Fields and 2022 Josh Allen, both of whom just beat him in first downs (34 and 32 to Daniels' 31) but really outdistanced him in touchdowns (three apiece, to Daniels' one).
The best trait Daniels carried with him from college is his twitch in the pocket. Paradoxically, when he's standing still in the pocket, he's one of the most dangerous athletes in the league because he hasn't moved yet. Unblocked blitzers or winning pass rushers come barreling down, and Daniels is suddenly gone through one of several nooks or crannies.
His quickness is not just astonishing -- it's unique. Most of the league's best athletes and escape artists at quarterback -- Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts -- win with explosiveness and bulk, surviving glancing contact before sprinting to space. Even Lamar Jackson, perhaps the best contemporary comparison to Daniels (though it's still not that good), has bulked up over his time in the league to better endure contact. Daniels' stringy build and receiver-like twitch make him slippery, leading not just to impossible escapes but also productive runs after.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) June 6, 2025
Watch this play closely. It looks easy only because Daniels makes it so. Not only is there a collapsing pocket with pressure off the right side, but there is also a quarterback spy meant to close on him after the initial pressure condenses his space. The entire intention behind this rush plan is to ensure there isn't room to escape. Daniels still flows like water through the smallest crack and isn't even touched until he's 20 yards downfield.
Perhaps as impressive as the physical game on his scrambles is the mental acuity with which he selects them. Daniels scrambled on 11.8% of his dropbacks -- the seventh-highest rate since 2000. He scrambled on 24.7% of his pressured dropbacks -- the highest rate since at least 2000.
A high scramble rate can be the product of poor pocket management and pressure response, leading to unrewarding results on actual throws (looking at you, 2022 Fields and 2018 Allen). In Daniels, nobody could make the case his scramble-first nature is to poor ends. Yes, he leaves plays on the field -- it's inevitable. But the discernment with which he chooses when to tuck and run or when to escape, extend and throw is, frankly, shocking for a rookie. Instincts are supposed to develop over time, but Daniels' knack for in-play management was reminiscent of Allen and Jackson -- the scramblers who've been doing this for the better part of a decade.
On pressured dropbacks on which Daniels actually attempted a pass -- removing sacks and scrambles from the equation -- he rocked. He ranked fourth in air yards per attempt, sixth in off-target rate, seventh in yards per dropback and fifth in adjusted net yards per attempt. The guy who was the best scrambler in the league was also a top-10 passer when he elected to hang in there against pressure.
This doesn't just take toughness -- it also takes football IQ. I loved this third-and-6 against the Buccaneers in the wild-card round.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) June 6, 2025
Watch Daniels change the protection at the line of scrimmage pre-snap. Knowing he has Terry McLaurin on a vertical route to his left, he fully slides the protection right. In the event that the blitz comes from the left, Daniels will be hot -- but he'll almost certainly have a one-on-one with McLaurin, and his trust and chemistry with McLaurin was unimpeachable last season on deep throws. If the blitz comes from the right, Daniels will be protected -- and while the Buccaneers defense will likely have help over McLaurin now, he can work through his progressions or break the pocket to extend.
Daniels keeps the safety in the middle of the field just long enough, hits the back foot of his drop and makes an accurate, on-time throw with no hitch. That's veteran quarterbacking in a first playoff start. Rookies like that don't come around every year.
There is little doubt in my mind Daniels' rookie season was the real stuff, but it's worth remarking that just about everything broke well for Washington. Take the deep balls to McLaurin: His 40% catch rate on downfield throws was his best since his rookie season in 2019, and his 27.6 total EPA on downfield targets more than doubled his next best. Deep passes are high-risk, high-reward plays on small samples, which means regression is likely.
Also big for regression was the fourth-down success, even for as clutch as Daniels is. The Commanders converted 87% of their fourth-down attempts in the regular season (20-of-23), which is the best fourth-down season since at least 2000. Washington added 44.3 EPA on fourth-down attempts, the highest number since 2000 and a number that almost certainly will not be repeated next season.
I don't bring these up to take away from Daniels, but rather to insulate us from a C.J. Stroud-esque sophomore tumble in the national eye. Stroud was all that and a bag of chips after his rookie season, and he started his second season under the same offensive coordinator, behind the same line and throwing to the same skill players (with a couple of exciting additions in Stefon Diggs and Joe Mixon).
Things fell apart, as they often do in the league. Shaky offensive line talent snowballed with coordinator errors, and offensive injuries threw Stroud right into a sophomore slump, despite the film showing the same aggressive, talented passer who starred as a rookie. There are a lot of worlds where the 2025 Commanders get the same stupendous play from Daniels but look worse on offense despite the keystone pieces they return and the additions they made this offseason.
The final note for Daniels was well-covered last season: A rib injury, suffered against the Panthers in Week 7, clearly lingered and affected his play. The only thing that can truly derail this steam train of a career is that which always looms over athletic quarterbacks: injury. Continuing to slide and avoid hits should remain the first priority in his game.
Could Drake Maye get some help?
I had well and truly forgotten just how bad the Patriots offense was around Maye last season. He had without question the worst offensive line of the rookie quarterbacks, and I would wager the worst offensive line of any quarterback. From Week 6 on, he had more quick pressures (under 2.5 seconds) than any passer save for Joe Burrow -- and Burrow had 124 more dropbacks. Maye's overall pressure rate of 37.3% was exceeded only by Deshaun Watson -- but it was not the product of extended dropbacks, as Maye got the ball out faster than the league-average passer.
Perhaps even more debilitating to the offense was the line's performance in the run game. On running back carries, the Patriots averaged 4.0 yards per rush (only five teams were worse) but only had an expected yards per carry of 3.7 yards per rush (no teams were worse). The Patriots backs were creating yardage just to get to 4.0 yards per carry! That's how poorly this line operated in the running game.
That qualifier is very important, however: running back carries. Because the QB carries were excellent. Maye scrambled on 10.8% of his dropbacks, second only to Daniels among quarterbacks. Maye's 9.0 yards per scramble exceeded Daniels' 8.1, as did his explosive run rate (37.8% to 27.1%). I'm not taking Maye before Daniels were I running a triple-option offense, nor is anyone else -- but Maye's significant scrambling achievements have gotten lost in Daniels' historical shadow. Smart coaches would start including him in the option running game as a big-bodied, vertical runner à la Josh Allen or Jalen Hurts.
Unlike Allen and Hurts (and just about any truly dangerous quarterback in the modern NFL), Maye struggled to generate explosives through the air. He was highly efficient -- eighth in success rate among all rookie quarterbacks since 2000 -- but 22nd in EPA per dropback and 47th in explosive play rate. His longest completion was a 40-yarder. Ironically, it was his first NFL touchdown pass in his first career start, and not at all a portent of things to come.
Not only could the Patriots not protect Maye long enough to let routes develop downfield, but they also lacked a receiver who could make a play there. Of his 32 downfield targets last season, 14 went to Kayshon Boutte, a 2023 sixth-round pick who hauled in exactly three of those targets. The next two most frequently targeted were a pair of tight ends: Hunter Henry with five, and Austin Hooper with four. Neither Henry nor Hooper in their prime were the sort of tight ends who stretched the field on vertical routes. Last season? It was challenging to watch.
So Maye lived working quick game concepts, picking a side and going through reads. Nearly three-quarters of Maye's targets (73.4%) were within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage, behind only Tua Tagovailoa, Russell Wilson and Gardner Minshew -- not great company. This is especially worrisome because of the yards-after-catch athletes available to Tagovailoa (De'Von Achane, Tyreek Hill and Jonnu Smith) and Minshew (Brock Bowers, Brock Bowers and Brock Bowers). The Patriots were doing this with Henry, DeMario Douglas and Kendrick Bourne.
As such, many Maye dropbacks looked like this second-and-5 against Houston. This should be mirrored stick concepts, but rookie receiver Ja'Lynn Polk gets his route wrong to the bottom of the screen. No matter -- Maye is looking in the other direction. But the Texans are trapping the out route from the tight end, comfortable with sitting a safety on Boutte's vertical route -- he doesn't worry them much.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) June 6, 2025
Maye separates to throw, but he sees the squatting corner and thinks better of it. There's pressure off his right tackle, so he climbs, races the defensive tackle to the corner, wins and turns a play dead on arrival into a 15-yard gain.
Maye makes fast decisions and has a great feel for improvisation. He made one of my favorite plays from any QB this season on an out-of-structure throw against heavy pressure from Buffalo. Watch Maye abort the play-action fake to Antonio Gibson as he sees the linebacker blitz with perfect timing right down the pipe. He abandons his drop but keeps both hands on the ball and retains a sense of timing, too. He holds the ball long enough to throw the receiver open on the break, and makes a high-difficulty pass against his momentum and in the face of pressure. Can't teach it.
Drake Maye and Antonio Gibson both see the blitz (great timing from Dorian Williams) and abort the play-action fake.
— Benjamin Solak (@BenjaminSolak) December 23, 2024
Then Maye makes an off-platform, out-of-rhythm, against his momentum throw to the middle of the field for a chunk gain.
Young man's got it. pic.twitter.com/1jn0XI9uiL
I am every bit as certain Maye has got it as I am that Daniels has got it or that Stroud had it as a rookie (and still does). Some guys immediately clear the requisite bar of poise, arm talent, football processing and athletic ability. There's no doubt in my mind Maye's going to be a good starter in this league.
Just how good, and just when it produces good offense, depends on the other guys. Maye has a new offensive coordinator (Josh McDaniels) and some much-needed offensive line help, but I wouldn't call the Patriots' roster inspiring. Nearly all of the eggs in the field-stretching search are in the basket of third-round rookie receiver Kyle Williams. Stefon Diggs, off an ACL tear and entering his age-32 season, is the best bet to lead the team in targets. Two new tackles and a center should improve the line, but free agency and the draft are never sure things.
Do we really know anything about Michael Penix Jr.?
Lotta up, lotta down in Penix's three starts to end the 2024 season. About what you'd expect from a rookie, especially since those were his first career starts. Had you paused Bo Nix's rookie season after three starts, he would have been 1-2 as a starter with zero touchdown passes and four interceptions. Young players drastically improve across their first 10 or 15 starts.
The best of Penix showed a quarterback with the timing, arm talent and fearlessness necessary to carry out and elevate coordinator Zac Robinson's Sean McVay-inspired offense. Penix is willing to throw routes with anticipation to the sideline and over the middle of the field, and he has the velocity to cash those checks.
Penix also gets it. You can see him identify an advantageous matchup for Bijan Robinson pre-snap, then get him the ball fast out of the flat; open his head one way in his dropback, manipulate a coverage defender, then throw into that void. There is clear evidence of understanding and feel.
Here's a good example on third-and-6 against the Giants -- his first start. Penix always wants Darnell Mooney on the slant, but he must worry about linebackers dropping off the line of scrimmage and occupying the window. He initially opens right, gets the linebacker to take one lateral step and then snaps his body left before throwing with enough velocity to beat the very 'backer he had just relocated.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) June 6, 2025
This is a particularly important play because Penix was barely asked to process and execute the quick game. The ball came out fast, don't get me wrong: His 2.73-second time to throw was one of the quickest releases of any quarterback in 2024. But with 10.1 air yards per attempt, those quick throws weren't going into the underneath areas -- they were going to one-on-one opportunities downfield.
Shot selection is a big thing to watch for Penix over his sophomore season. Of all the quarterbacks who attempted 100 passes -- again: Penix attempted only 105, so it should be taken with a large grain of salt -- no passer threw go balls or hitches more frequently (14.3% and 23.8% of all attempts, respectively). The Falcons largely ran their base offense, but Penix preferred to live in isolation, throwing to backside receivers in man coverage instead of reading out the front side of concepts. And in that pursuit, he was highly aggressive: 28.6% of his throws were to vertical routes (go, post, corner, wheel, etc.), which cleared second place (Anthony Richardson Sr. at 24.6%) by a decent margin.
Working all of these isolation shots is a highly defensible approach when Penix's No. 1 target is Drake London, who is simply one of the best ball-winners in football. (London had 17 tight window receptions last season, ranking second in the league.) But living and dying by the one-on-one matchup will limit any offense, leaving meat on the bone by tunneling on one answer.
On this second-and-14 against the Commanders, Penix clearly wants London on the dig from the bottom of the screen. At the last moment, he realizes the weak safety is driving down, and the big post to Mooney should open up at the top of the screen for an even bigger gain, and he flips to it.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) June 6, 2025
Penix separates his hands to throw, but he's behind and Mooney is actually nicely covered by the corner. Penix tries to come back to London late, but he has to relocate with the pocket breaking. He pumps, thinking about throwing either the dig or the post (I can't tell) late, but realizes it isn't worth the risk and scrambles for 3 yards.
Stuck in the middle between bird-dogging London and reading the play out, Penix gets frozen. It's a rookie error, and easy to clean up. But as much as London's dominance is a crutch in good ways (see: game-tying drive against the Commanders), it can be a crutch in bad ways, too. I admire Penix's willingness to throw just about any deep route in any window, but I worry about an offense's consistency when the quarterback regularly forgoes underneath options on early downs.
Growth for Penix this season looks like a quarterback in better command of himself. With the starting job well in hand, a good line and a great running game, he does not need to wear the superhero cape to win games. Keeping the offense on schedule and avoiding hugely negative plays that force third-and-longs is an integral part of complementary football.
As always, it's better to have a guy with gumption that you need to reel in than it is to have a guy without ambition and attempt to draw it out of him. Because his rookie season was so short, I don't want to draw any big career arc conclusions besides the obvious: Penix clearly has all the tools in the toolbox, and there's some sharpening still to do.
OK, do we really know anything about J.J. McCarthy?
Not much! Nineteen preseason snaps worth, to be exact.
On those plays, McCarthy threw a nice backside dig to Jalen Nailor, took a big shot to buy time for Trishton Jackson on a crosser, threw off-platform into a pick and lofted a beautiful deep ball into a bucket for a touchdown. I remain wholly unconvinced there's anything meaningful in these dropbacks against the Raiders' backups last August, but it's all I've had to watch.
We know McCarthy tore a meniscus, which can be a tricky recovery -- he needed a second procedure in November to address swelling from his first surgery. We also know the Vikings poked around the veteran quarterback market this offseason, though their need for a QB2 justifies that search more than any lack of faith in McCarthy as QB1. And we also know they had no real interest in extending Sam Darnold at market price, which further implies they like McCarthy. Then again, we know they traded up to take him with the No. 10 pick, so we didn't really need much proof that they liked him.
Pat McAfee reacts to the Vikings signing GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah to a multiyear extension.
What else do we know? We know that although there's no such thing as a QB-proof offense, the Vikings are about as close as it gets. Their pair of easy separating receivers in Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison are known for their route running and quickness, but it's their ball tracking and catch radius that really make them QB-friendly -- they erase inaccuracy, especially down the field. The Vikings were one of the heaviest pre-snap motion teams last season, as well as one of the heaviest play-action teams, and coach Kevin O'Connell pulls both levers to create easy reads for his quarterback. Minnesota's retooling of its interior offensive line (drafted Donovan Jackson, signed Will Fries and Ryan Kelly) should lead to an improvement in the running game as well, shortening third-down distances and reducing the number of dropbacks for McCarthy as he ramps up to NFL speed.
It's important to see how McCarthy looks, especially on the move after his major knee injury. But as long as he's athletically back, there are plenty of reasons for optimism.
How much is Sean Payton willing to put on Bo Nix's plate?
In a class characterized by big-play hunters and prolific scramblers, Nix is a zag. Daniels, Williams and Maye invited pressures and risked taking sacks last season. Nix was pressured on only 28% of his dropbacks, and just 13.4% of those pressures became sacks -- those numbers were below and way below league average, respectively. And it's not like he was getting the ball out at lightning speed -- 37.7% of his throws were out in less than 2.5 seconds, which was the lowest rate of the four rookies.
So what was going on? For one, the Broncos have an elite offensive line -- they could make a strong case for having the league's best. Nix was not comfortable as a pocket manager early in the season, and he's still prone to breaking out of clean pockets to try to disrupt defensive geometry. But as he gained faith behind his line, he got better at settling in. It's easy to forget that the start to his career was extremely rough -- in three of his first four games, his dropback success rate was below 40% -- and it took some offensive tinkering from his coach to get him into a better spot.
Time to throw was one of the big changes, as Payton began shifting targets closer to the line of scrimmage. From the first half of the season to the second half, Nix's time to throw dropped from 3.1 to 2.9 seconds, and his air yards per attempt fell from 7.9 to 6.6. Instead of one out of every four pass attempts going behind the line of scrimmage, one out of every three did. In the back half of the season, no quarterback threw behind the line more frequently.
To make an offense like this -- one built on swings, screens and checkdowns -- work, a quarterback has to make fast decisions and trust the playmakers. Payton drafted Nix in large part for his on-field decision-making and his success as a quick, accurate distributor underneath in college. He immediately delivered on that evaluation.
Here's a third-and-11 on which the Broncos convert with a 12-yard gain from running back Javonte Williams, who releases late after helping in pass protection. The Chargers' defense is constructed to make opposing quarterbacks check it down -- they play their zones with plenty of depth, as you see here -- then rally and tackle. To beat such a defense, passers must be willing to check down quickly. Get the ball into the hands of a receiver before the defense is ready to drive on him and tackle.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) June 6, 2025
I'm confident one of these other young passers would have seen the skinny post from Marvin Mims Jr. and said, "You know what ... I can probably hit that." And maybe they could have! Nix could too, but he made the safer choice quickly to get his team at worst to a makeable fourth down. Better yet, a conversion.
It's true that Payton made Nix more of a game manager as the season went on, beating opponents on the chalkboard before the ball was even snapped. But Nix deserves his flowers for filling the point guard role nicely. And as his confidence grew, so did his effectiveness when his number was called. The touchdown up the seam to Mims against the Browns. The other moon-ball touchdown to Mims against the Bengals. Nix will uncork it when Payton dials up a shot play, and that's a critical trait.
There is an obvious floor on what the Broncos did offensively to finish the season. Much of their cheesing with swings and screens was also a product of a poor running game, which rookie second-round pick RJ Harvey is meant to solve. An improved handoff game will give Nix easier play-action opportunities and remove some of the pressure on him to always take the moderate gain.
But the passing game will always hit a ceiling if Nix doesn't improve throwing to the layered areas of the field -- between 5 and 20 yards. He threw 12 interceptions on the season -- not exactly game-manager numbers -- in large part because he drives intermediate-breaking throws into tough windows. He can throw directly to defenders in moments of panic; he can experience accuracy drain when he puts his whole body into generating velocity; the ball can die on him when he tries to aim it carefully.
Good example here. A wayward snap and quick pressure from Myles Garrett force Nix to accelerate his process. He throws to Troy Franklin on the dig, but the ball doesn't have ideal zip and is behind him. Franklin slows down, which creates time and space for the corner to close on the catch point and deflect it up for a pick.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) June 6, 2025
Nix is pretty much as billed coming out of college. He's more than capable of running an offense, but it's still uncertain if he can really elevate one. I like the way the Broncos are bringing him along, though. You could see his confidence growing over time. As they continue to improve their pass-catching corps, they can give him more opportunities to work downfield. The developmental arc is there, as long as Payton can stay ahead of defenses long enough to keep pressure off Nix's shoulders.
Is Spencer Rattler really a factor in the Saints' QB competition?
It would seem odd to touch on the top six quarterbacks but not the seventh. Especially because Rattler started more games than Penix and McCarthy. So, here's a word on Rattler.
I remain extremely dubious that the quarterback "battle" in New Orleans is a true competition. A new coaching staff helped select rookie Tyler Shough with the No. 40 pick, far earlier than Rattler was chosen (150th) a year ago. And although Rattler flexed his arm talent at moments, he largely struggled to avoid turnovers and sacks, throwing more interceptions (5) than touchdown passes (4). It's worth noting that Rattler's starts came with both Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed absent from the lineup -- his leading targets were tight end Juwan Johnson, running back Alvin Kamara and wide receiver Dante Pettis. But Rattler's play read more to me as "career journeyman backup" than "viable starter." I wager we see him start this year only if Shough struggles mightily or misses time with injury.