Daniel Kelly looked at lot of good young quarterbacks as a former New York Jets scout, and now as a member of the media, he’s still evaluating signal-callers…and to be honest, he’s surprised at the impact Jayden Daniels has had already in Washington.
“It’s really been an incredible study – going into the Draft, I had a third-round grade on Jayden Daniels, because what I saw at LSU was three major concerns coming into the NFL,” Kelly said. “Number one was his very thin, frail frame and how that was gonna hold up in an NFL that’s not really that kind to the running quarterbacks. The second concern I had was just a slower processing time; according to PFF, his time to throw was 2.91 seconds, and I couldn't quite figure it out because he had a Top 10 offensive line and two first-round receivers at LSU, so why is it taking so long for him to get the ball out of his hands, and why is he running this much?”
If you’re not already wondering how Kelly was thinking, well, here’s No. 3:
“He looked like he was filled with anxiety in the pocket. He had what we call happy feet – he was bouncing all around, and the concern there was it was really affecting his ball placement in the short to intermediate route levels,” Kelly said. “So I put a third-round grade on him as an ideal backup guy – but I sat down yesterday and really marinated in all four games, and what jumped off the screen at me was how relaxed he’s looked and how comfortable he looked in that offense; we didn’t see that at LSU at all. There’s an old saying that a game is won from the neck up, and the confidence level that Jayden Daniels is playing with right now and Kliff Kingsbury's offense is off the charts. He's playing with superstar-level confidence and swag and energy, and you can see it permeate the entire team that didn't show up there.
It’s showing up now, and that’s the biggest difference.”
EB laughed as Kelly then said he had a fourth-round grade and a 100 percent bust rating on Caleb Williams, which also had just as curious an explanation how it was different than almost every other evaluator in the process – although Williams is struggling with a lot of the things Kelly saw as issues.
And here’s the thing: Kliff Kingsbury was Williams’ OC at USC last year and probably could’ve had that job with the Bears, but he came to DC instead, and now Williams has Shane Waldron, whose Seattle offenses look spartan compared to what Geno Smith is doing now in the PNW.
“I'm gonna dismiss Shane Waldron right now as being the sole cause of this, because I think he knows what he's working with and is playing to Williams’ strengths right now, but I think Kingsbury knows what was happening, and that’s why he took the Washington job, because there’s real concerns about Caleb Williams here,” Kelly said. “We watched him have an emotional breakdown, and you don’t want him to lose his confidence, but he’s a guy that threw a lot of short passes, and it suggested he was really more of a inconsistent game manager. The concern right now is that the No. 1 strength Williams had coming out, his mobility and athleticism and ability to get out of jams, and some of the reps I’ve watched, he doesn’t even feel the pass rush coming. I don't know what's going on there, but it's a different Caleb Williams, a far less competent Caleb Williams than even was at USC. I think it was a matter of him being grossly and severely overrated.”
Take a listen to Kelly’s entire segment above, which also touches on Bryce Young’s struggles, who might be the cream of this year’s QB draft crop, and more!