Caleb Williams remains a divisive figure among Chicago Bears fans and the national media. On the one hand, he has five 4th quarter comebacks, is 9-3 as a starter this year, and has thrown 17 touchdowns to just five interceptions. However, he has also struggled with accuracy all season, completing just 58% of his passes. Granted, some of that is his receivers not consistently catching the ball, but the problems are well-documented. It leaves people uncertain about his ultimate ceiling. Howie Long isn’t concerned.
The Hall of Fame defensive end played a lot of football in the 1980s and 1990s. He has watched even more since shifting to analysis over the past couple of decades. One would think he’d probably be down on Williams more than other people. You would be wrong. After watching the Bears’ young quarterback since last year, he has begun to see several similarities to a player with whom Long was intimately familiar during his playing days. He revealed the name on NFL On Fox during Sunday’s action.
Howie Long played against Elway for years.
While the Denver Broncos icon was taller at 6’3″, his playing style was remarkably similar to Williams’. Both have cannons for arms. Both were known for holding the ball and making plays with their legs. Also, both showed an uncanny knack for late-game heroics. Elway had 31 4th quarter comebacks in his career. Williams already has seven. Then there is the accuracy thing. People often overlook that Elway wasn’t pinpoint with his throws early in his career. His 53.4% completion percentage through his first three seasons was well below league average. It didn’t really improve much until later in his career.
That didn’t stop him from winning a lot of football games.
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It hasn’t stopped Williams either. This obsession with his completion percentage has glossed over the fact that he has won 10 of his last 13 games—six of them by a 4th-quarter comeback. Williams is a gamer. If Howie Long sees shades of Elway in him, that isn’t a bad thing.
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A big part of completion percentage is the type of throws a qb is making. If Caleb can increase this stat due to better accuracy, then great. If it’s dinking and dunking (like a lot of other qb’s) to get his completion percentage to league average or better then forget it. There is something to be said about boring ball control if the game dictates but I’d rather have explosive plays
The ceiling is limitless for Caleb. It’s the work that goes into getting there. The same was said of Elway, Manning, Allen, Mahomes, etc, etc. The key is the work that needs to take place to reach their ceiling. Many haven’t done it because they didn’t put in the time. That is why it was so crucial for Johnson to get in Caleb’s ear and challenge him with the 70% completion number. A number only 1 QB has right now btw. Is Caleb a long way from his ceiling? Yes! But if he can keep putting in the work and… Read more »
Howie and son trying very hard to jump on my hc Ben’s bandwagon without being so obviously mercenary or opportunist.
They were also both “generational” QBs coming out of college as well.