Mark Schlereth doesn't think Caleb Williams is a good QB | Take The North
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What clip from Mark Schlereth sparked today’s conversation about Caleb Williams?
Let's get into it here today. Mark Schlereth, who is a former offensive lineman, big-time media guy. They've been all over the place in media. He hosts Mark Schlereth and you and I have not had a chance to get our hands on some of the critiques or just some of his opinions on the Bears starting quarterback Caleb Williams. So let's just listen to this right now and react to it because I know that our audience will find this to be particularly provocative. You may agree. You may very well disagree with what you're about to hear from Mark Schlereth about number 18 Caleb Williams. Here it is.
Caleb Williams is not a good quarterback. He's a dynamic athlete. He makes big-time plays. But is he a good quarterback? No, he's not a good quarterback because he doesn't play on schedule. Like, I mean, my evaluation is watch how many times they get into a late in the third quarter or fourth quarter and they're down 21-7. And then he holds a ball, he scrambles around, he makes three big throws, and all of a sudden they win a game 21-24. That's not playing quarterback at an efficient level. That's being a dynamic playmaker. So at this particular point in time, Caleb Williams isn't a good quarterback. If you were ranking that class, you put Jaden Daniels ahead of him. You put Drake May ahead of him. I put Bo Nix ahead of him.
You have this generational talent who's supposed to be a great quarterback. He's not a great quarterback. He's a great playmaker. And when it comes to off-schedule football, the guy is probably about as good as it gets. He is Kyler Murray with more height.
Wow. I mean, right from the beginning, Dan, and I want to let you have the first crack at this, not a good quarterback. Wow. Wow. What do you think about that?
So there's a couple of things I think about this and I, I both love and hated this when I heard this, when I was on vacation, I was, I think I was just laying down on an afternoon in Tennessee and I was scrolling through Twitter and I saw, I'm like, wait, what is this? And I listened to it and I'm like, I hate this because these are the conversations that mushroom into things that they shouldn't mushroom into. But it also feels like it leads us right into sort of the, the nuanced layered conversation that is, that is important to have as Caleb makes this, uh, Journey, I guess, is the way you'd put it. And I think the word that was missing from Schlereth's take there is he's not a good quarterback yet.
And I think that if you add that word, it sort of changes the context and the frame around this.
But he didn't. And that felt intentional, you know?
It did. And then he subsequently went on ESPN 1000 and elaborated a little bit more on what he was talking about, which I thought was, you know, a way to diffuse the situation a little bit and bring it back to to kind of measured ground. Because you hear the things he said in that clip and he says not a good quarterback, but then also acknowledges dynamic athlete, great playmaker.
What exactly did Mark Schlereth mean when he said “Caleb Williams is not a good quarterback”?
Well, those are two things I would love to have in my quarterback. Right. Check and check. I'm glad he's a dynamic athlete and a great playmaker. I'm glad he has what we all know is the ability to take over a game in the fourth quarter and win it even when the team has played poorly and he himself has not been productive for three quarters. But where I think Mark Schlereth hits the bullseye with this is the understanding that the next step is in Caleb's progression in trying to climb this staircase as an NFL top-level quarterback, is understanding that you need to have better footwork. You need to have better accuracy. You need to play on schedule more frequently. You need, when the primary receiver is open, as the play is designed, to hit him with the football and do the things that Ben Johnson and Press Taylor and JT Barrett have told us they want Caleb to do
in 2026 and so that's the part of the conversation i love because it allows us to kind of take that magnifying glass that microscope and put it on the places where we're going to need to have our lens when we go to training camp when we go to preseason games when we start the regular season what are they asking caleb to do to take this next jump to become a top tier quarterback now i think we would both agree that you know
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2 chaptersSpeakers
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