Chicago Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams now has six starts in his career. That is still a very small sample size, but enough of one to get an idea of how the start of his career compares to others. When looking at his adjusted net yards per attempt, there are a few quarterbacks who stand out after six starts, and they all have one thing in common.
Trevor Lawrence, Joe Burrow, Baker Mayfield, Andrew Luck, and Caleb Williams all have an ANY/A that sits between 5.06 and 5.26 after their first six starts. All of them were selected number one, and Mayfield is the only one who did not start week one of his rookie season.
Name | Attempts | Completion % | Rating | Yards | TD | INT | Sack | ANY/A |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Caleb Williams | 199 | 65.3 | 88.7 | 1317 | 9 | 5 | 20 | 5.18 |
Trevor Lawrence | 216 | 59.7 | 75.5 | 1465 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 5.24 |
Joe Burrow | 246 | 65 | 85 | 1617 | 6 | 5 | 24 | 5.14 |
Baker Mayfield | 223 | 58.3 | 78.9 | 1471 | 8 | 6 | 20 | 5.06 |
Andrew Luck | 250 | 53.6 | 72.3 | 1674 | 7 | 7 | 16 | 5.26 |
The good news is that all of these quarterbacks have gone onto varying degrees of success. All of them have signed big-time extensions, Mayfield being the only that was not with the team that drafted him. More importantly, all of them won a playoff game with the team that drafted them.
What is impressive to see from this list is that Williams leads these rookies in plenty of categories. He has the best passer rating, just ahead of Burrow. His yards are the lowest, but so are his attempts, and his touchdowns are the highest. He is also tied with Burrow for the fewest interceptions, but with the most touchdowns, he does have the best TD: INT ratio.
Williams has been taking a bit too many sacks this year, but it Is good to know that he is not quite as rough as Burrow, and has taken as many sacks to start his career as Mayfield.
When Williams was drafted plenty of analysts said that the Bears were the best situation that a number one pick could fall into. After three weeks that was laughed at. Now that we have played six weeks, and Williams has comparable numbers to these most recent top selections,
This is exactly where we should have expected Williams to be at this point in his career.