Week 14 in the NFL and next year’s prospects

NFL week 14 starts tonight. I think it's 14, right? Week 14.

It is. Yeah, I don't remember the weeks. But I do know that for many people, depending on the league you're in, it's the final fantasy football regular season week. I know, big week. So, yeah, it's probably a must-win week for somebody, maybe me.

I don't care. Ryan Wilson, CBSSports.com, Pick Six Podcast, Super Friend. But also, with the first Pick Pod, and we're gonna start with that pod, Ryan Wilson joins us on the Adam Gold Show. Thank you very much, my man. How you doing? Adam, happy holidays. How you doing, man? I'm doing very well.

You and Rick Spielman, your partner in crime on that podcast, Rick fascinates me. And the last time you were on, we talked about what he had to say about Caleb Williams, in terms of best, better prospect than anybody, basically, he's ever seen, other than Andrew Luck. And this, we're talking about, and it's in relation to today's NFL. Maybe not a better prospect to be a quarterback than Peyton Manning, but for what today's NFL is, yes. So, he's got, you have, and you have your mock draft out, I saw the top ten, I haven't looked at the entirety of the draft, but I saw the top ten picks, and you have Caleb Williams won. I find it interesting that you have Drake May as the third quarterback. So, behind Jayden Daniels of LSU, who's probably the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy. But, so, tell me what you and your conversations with Rick have been like about Caleb and Jayden and Drake. Well, let's start with Drake May as my QB 3. I had him go in 6, I believe, to the Giants. And, so, before I did this, because I don't think anyone would argue that Jayden Daniels had the best, most productive college football season of all three of those quarterbacks, probably.

And for different reasons. Caleb's offensive line has been terrible. There have been questions about the offense and how it's run through Drake May at UNC, and I actually like Drake May a lot.

He is more than likely going to be QB 2. This was my fourth mock draft since the fall start here, and I thought I'd mix it up a little bit. So, I texted a couple of people in the league, I said, how crazy is it that Jayden Daniels might be considered getting taken before Drake? And the response to come back was not crazy. I mean, you know, I've heard crazier, basically.

So, I ran with it just to see what the reaction would be. I think at the end of the day, it's going to be, Drake May is going to be QB 2. And I don't know if we talked about this last time, Adam, but what I keep coming back to with Caleb, and this has been sort of a, it's gathering steam on social media, and then you hear people talk about it on the broadcast, and the issue is that Caleb plays out of structure too much. He does play out of structure a lot, because the offensive line was a huge problem.

They did have some receivers that could make plays, but because, you know, I'm a nerd at heart, I went and checked. And Caleb got rid of the ball in three seconds or left on 57 percent of his dropbacks. And when you compare that to Drake, Drake got rid of the ball three seconds or left on 62 percent of his dropbacks.

So, there's not that big a difference, and I think that's just something to keep in mind as we go through this process. In terms of what Rick thinks, Rick thinks I'm absolutely crazy for not taking Drake May as QB 2. Like, he is all in on Drake May. He has compared him to Trevor Lawrence, and that's a great comp.

My comp for Drake is a little wider than that. I think high-end Trevor, I think low-end Daniel Jones. That's the spectrum that you're on, and that's not necessarily an indictment, but I think the message and one that's a recurring theme that we talk about every week on the podcast, and I'm sure you do too on the radio show, Adam, is that, look, man, you can put Bryce Young in Carolina, but you have to do it with the understanding that he is going to struggle with no offensive line, no wide receivers, ownership in front office and turmoil based on the story around the athletic yesterday.

But if you surround him with people that can help him, C.J. Stroud, Anthony Richardson, then perhaps you have a chance. That's the same conversation for Drake. That's the same conversation for Caleb or any other quarterback that ends up going in the first round. You know, it's funny because I did want to get to the Young versus Stroud debate here because we are, so I'll just kind of preface it, and I do want to go back to the other quarterbacks, but we're so results box score oriented that all we see, C.J. Stroud putting up monster numbers, blah, blah, oh my gosh, the Panthers lost the draft, when I don't believe it's fair. Look, C.J. Stroud might be the better quarterback. I'm not trying to say anything otherwise.

And certainly by production right now, go, oh my gosh, I understand why people say that. But I don't believe for a second that Bryce Young has had a single chance to be even mildly successful here. There's, they can't protect him. They haven't, last week was the first time they even flashed anything close to a running game. He has, the only receiver he's got to throw to that he knows where he's going to be is Adam Thielen, and all of his best throws have gone to Adam Thielen. Every single one of them. I just don't know how anybody can succeed given that.

And yeah, ownership matters. I just don't think we can judge anything about Bryce Young until he has competence around him. You want a great example, Adam? Hey, let's go to Green Bay and look at Jordan Love, who sat on the bench for a couple of years. He got off to a little rocky start this year.

Oh, look at that. He's coming around. He has a chance to learn the offense. He wasn't forced into the role. He didn't have terrible players around him, unable to lift that offense around him. And I'm not trying to disrespect the Carolina Panthers, but when you look around the league, they are deficient in a lot of areas compared to other teams.

And I think patience is something, as you pointed out, that fans don't have, some owners don't have. And here's something else that Rick and I talked about. I didn't want to name names. But here's something else that Rick and I talked about, Adam.

If C.J. Stroud were just having an average rookie quarterback season and he looked like Anthony Richardson did before he got hurt, or maybe some of the other quarterbacks have had to play, Frank Reich might still have his job. Because I think what happened is David Tepper looked over his shoulder and said, wait a second, this is going, they're going off down in Houston.

Why aren't we doing the same thing? And you could argue again, the front office and the drafting, the coaching, the Mika Ryans, the offensive coordinator they're brought in, Bobby Slowik, and then C.J. Stroud, to not take anything away from him, is playing absolutely out of his mind, as you have noted. Those players around him have stepped up. The offensive line was banged up, but they were able to protect them.

The playmakers on the outside have helped them. And you talk about it. And Rick and I go through every single snap of the rookie quarterbacks, Bryce, C.J., and Will Levis now.

And we're having the same conversations that you're talking about. Bryce doesn't have a chance. Has Bryce played great?

No, he has not. But there are glimpses that you see from Alabama that you would like to see more consistently, and that just hasn't happened yet. Yeah, again, I think he is, in a lot of ways, I think he is similar to Brock Purdy in that he anticipates throws, right? I think he's that type of a quarterback. And when you don't know where your wide receivers are going to be, he doesn't trust them. He just doesn't.

I go back to the game against the Falcons in the opener. I think an argument could be made, and Bryce took the zero for it. I think an argument could be made that the two interceptions, and I forget the same guy who intercepted them both. Jesse Bates.

Jesse Bates. The both interceptions could have been the receiver wasn't where he was supposed to be. And I think at that point, I can absolutely think, I can't trust that guy. I can't trust Jonathan Minkow. I can't trust Terrace Marshall, whoever the receivers were.

I can absolutely see that. Alright, I don't want to feel like I'm crazy, but people, again, they look at box scores, and oh, they clearly lost the draft. And by the way, the folks at the Four Letter Network don't help us any, because that's all they do, is they sit every day and bang on, like the Panthers can get banged on for a lot of reasons. But Bryce Young, I don't believe is one of them. But I want to get back to Caleb Williams real quick. Off platform throws, unstructured offense. Aren't we describing Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, quarterbacks like that, Joe Burrow to a large extent, that make play Josh Allen, that make a lot of plays when everything breaks down?

Don't you want that? Yeah, and I think that's, we got to have something to talk about because the draft isn't until April 25th, Adam. And I think part of the other issue is that there's been some pushback, fair or not, that Caleb's dad's going to be involved. And I've had a scout tell me, think LeVar Ball. Oh really? He paints his fingernails.

Sneaker brand? He's talked about, you know, maybe Caleb doesn't come out this year. This is back in the fall, September. Maybe you want ownership stake in the team. Stuff that you're like, okay, listen, let's dial it back a few notches here. And that's going to play into it. And I've had teams tell me that it's a concern. I've had other teams tell me that he can be, quote, unquote, managed. And that's not necessarily a conversation you want to have about a player's relatives.

But again, that's where we are. I think that plays into it because, I mean, there is no one squeakier clean than Drake May. We know his family and all the success they've had athletically and the type of people they are.

And that means something. You know, by the way, Drake is 6'4", 230, whatever he is. He looks like he was built in a quarterback factory.

So all those things are going to be taken into consideration. But in terms of strictly what you see on the field, there is no doubt in my mind that Caleb Williams is a special, special talent. And can he play in structure? Yeah, he can. Does he do it a lot? Not as often as maybe an NFL team would like.

But to your point, the things he does out of structure, one other person on Planet Earth can do it, maybe two. Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. And if you want to be convinced that he can play inside a structured offense, watch this very last game of college against UCLA. And they have a bunch of dudes in that defense, a couple of them are going to get drafted in the first round. And he was in structure and on time consistently because otherwise he would have gotten hit in the mouth.

And I think that's where you start the conversation. And then you look at all the other work he did on the field. The off-field stuff will take care of itself in terms of the interviews and how teams deal with that. But in terms of the way he plays football, I don't know how you can't love what he brings to a team. Yeah, I also if I'm an NFL franchise, if I mean, he's he's going to be a professional. I mean, what dad says or how dad acts, it's just not even a concern unless I have two players who are identical. In which case I'll go, well, let me let me eliminate the headache.

But there's obviously not two players who are identical. I've heard this final thing for you, Ryan Wilson. We haven't talked to any NFL football for this week, and that's fine. Because we're going to have an absolute derp fest at quarterback tonight. Look, I hope Mitch Trubisky plays well because I assume it's going to be Trubisky and Mac Jones. I hope Mitch plays well. I hope the Steelers win.

I'd love to see the Steelers make the playoffs again. I'm a huge Mike Tomlin fan. The the thing about Williams for me, people have said that Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud were better prospects are are still better prospects than Williams or May or even Jayden Daniels.

How would you react to that? No, if Kayla come out last year's draft, if he were eligible, he'd have been the first quarterback taken. I mean, the issue with Bryce, of course, is the size. C.J., we didn't know how athletic he was until that Georgia game.

People in the building knew. But you can say that to scouts and media folk, and you're not going to believe until you see it. And I think we undersold how good C.J.

actually was. He was the most accurate passer in last year's draft. Bryce was close behind. But Caleb does so many things that very few people on earth can do. And by the way, I talked about his dad. Caleb is a competitor. And one of the pushbacks we got was, well, he was making faces at the Notre Dame game. He wasn't into it. He cried when they lost the game late in the season.

That's right. That's because he wants to win. I don't hate that.

That's what I want in a quarterback. Yeah. What's wrong? He cried when he lost. What's wrong with that? He didn't cry when they took his lunch away. They wanted to win a game.

People get upset or they draw meaning from the silliest things. Ryan Wilson, you are awesome. I appreciate your time always, sir. Thank you, Adam. Have a good one, brother.

You got it. Ryan Wilson, CBSSports.com pick six podcast moderator. I've heard that way too much because the because this is the context of it as it pertains to what the Panthers did this past draft, which is why I was saying it at the time and it became even more apparent. And this is not a Bryce Young problem. I think Bryce Young is going to be a very good quarterback in this league. And he may even turn out to be better than C.J. Stroud.

Calm your jets, everybody. I'm not saying he will. I'm just saying he might. We have no clue. We have no clue about either quarterback. It certainly looks like C.J.

Stroud is going to be really good and good for him and good for the Texans. But boy, you cannot possibly judge Bryce Young based on what has happened this year. You can't do it unless you decide I choose to be completely unfair.

In which case I can't help you. But there is no question that last year was not the draft to go from nine to one. No question. And when you have as many things to address in your on your roster, especially on the offensive side of the ball. But I would argue on both sides of the ball.

When you have so many holes. To give up assets for the second consecutive year for a quarterback, Matt Corral. That is management malpractice at its finest. And that was the point. Last year was not the draft to go from nine to one. This year was the draft to go from nine to one. Take last year's draft, get as much draft capital as you could and build your team and then plop the quarterback into it.

Even if you're not completely built, this would have been the year to do it. Caleb Williams is that guy. He is. Drake may might also be that guy. I don't know how Jayden Daniels translates to the NFL. And I think through our conversation with Ryan Wilson, he believes that Drake is ultimately the second best quarterback in this draft. But man, last year wasn't the year to do it. There's we'll find out over time, I guess, but Caleb Williams, that dude is going to be different, just different.