Which Rookie QB had the better debut? | NFL News & Notes

Published: Sep 09, 2024 Duration: 00:09:52 Category: Sports

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right here on HQ. Find it on CBS sports HQ, streaming free anywhere you are. And we welcome you into game day. Scoreboard. Kiana Martin here as we are narrowly through the first week of the NFL season. And boy, it's been a long time coming. But there were no shortages. Shortages of storylines, highlights and some lowlights that we'll all get into right here today. And we start off because it was the best of times and it was the worst of times. I'm talking about the life of a bears fan and on Sunday they got to see their hopeful quarterback of the future in action. In his NFL debut as Caleb Williams was 14 of 29 passing for just 93 yards. But did manage a win in his debut against the Titans. And we now welcome in CBS sports NFL analyst Ryan Wilson is Ryan. We got to see the young guys in action on Sunday. I'm talking about those rookie quarterbacks. We got to see Caleb Williams. We got to see a little bit of Bo Nix. We got to see a little bit of Jayden Daniels. I would say all varying degrees of success from their outings on Sunday. But I want to get a get your insight on what you saw. You've been looking at these guys over the past several months, even going back to their days playing in college. I want to get your takeaways. What stood out from the young guys who made their debut under center, whether good or bad? Yeah, Kiana. So I've been following these guys for two, three, sometimes four years. Jayden Daniels and Bo Nix are 23 years old. Caleb is a year younger. They've obviously all transferred because the transfer portal is now a thing. So as we cover the draft and talk about these young men, I'm intimately familiar with, with all three of them, and here's the thing, week one in the NFL oftentimes doesn't look like when you were in college tearing it up. And there are a lot of good dudes in the SEC. There are a lot of good dudes in the former Pac 12 where Bo Nix played. We didn't see that on Sunday. And you can see the varying degrees of, let's call it mediocrity. And look, here's the thing. Let's start with Jayden Daniels in the middle there. When I watched him, I went back and watched all three of these guys today. He felt like he was playing fast. And by that I mean he would get to his first read. If it wasn't there, his eyes would drop and he would try to run. Now he ran for 88 yards and two rushing touchdowns. You see that there? So he was able to make something out of nothing. But I think he's going to get better because if Kliff Kingsbury, the offensive coordinator who we know is at USC last year with Caleb, coach Patrick Mahomes at Texas Tech. And speaking of Caleb Williams, again, the numbers were were not great. And we saw some of the high slash low lights coming into this segment here. He had a touchdown pass dropped by Keenan Allen. But other than that it was a lot of trying to make stuff out of nothing. And some of the stuff we saw at USC that he got dinged for it in the draft process, but that, I mean, he wasn't playing on time. It wasn't one, two, three ball out. He is going to get better at that as well. I'm not concerned. The biggest concern for me lies with Bo Nix and not necessarily with the way Bo Nix played. But the question I have with Sean Payton having him drop back over 40 times that game was tight throughout until the very end there, and I don't know why you wouldn't lean more on the run game. I'm sure Sean Payton will have chances to answer those questions in the coming days and weeks. Bo Nix was okay. He threw the two interceptions late. They were back breaking interceptions. He threw late a lot across the middle of the field. I think he will get better as well. But if we're grading these guys on their week one performances, I'll give him a C plus out of the kindness of my heart. But they got to play better and I think they will. Keanu, like you called it, varying degrees of mediocrity. It's only week one in their rookie season. Plenty of time to grow and develop as we hope, especially those bears fans. But I want to stick with quarterback play. Perhaps some performances to forget. And I'm looking at Daniel Jones and the Giants couldn't find the end zone except for a pick six if you want to count that. Finding the end zone. But they were embarrassed essentially by the Vikings at home. Meanwhile, head coach Brian Daboll opting to stick with his QB heading into week two. Ryan, do you feel like this is the best route moving forward for the Giants? No, and I don't say that as a slight to Daniel Jones. It just feels like everything has gone sideways and we are literally 60 minutes into the Giants season. It's to the point, Kiana, not far from where you are, that Giants fans were harassing Daniel Jones after the game. And look, I understand that you are frustrated. This is not entirely Daniel Jones's fault, right? Here's the pick six you're talking about. He got Van Ginkel there. Andrew Van Ginkel is a good player. You don't want to have that happen to you. No matter who you are or who you're throwing, who you're playing against. But this is a dire situation, and I don't use the word dire lightly. They're going to have to be changes. And we knew they wanted to make changes in the off season because Hard Knocks kept telling us that they were trying to trade up and get Jayden Daniels. They don't have any faith in Daniel Jones. At least the actions that we heard this summer indicate as much. And Daniel Jones is probably playing with a lack of confidence. And once the mistakes started piling up on Sunday, it just snowballed from there. Malik Nabers wasn't frustrated, but he was asked about what was going on and he seemed sort of confused. And I imagine this season is going to go like we expect it to go and they're going to be in position to draft a quarterback. More things for me and Rick Spielman to talk about and with the first Pick podcast. But it's not great if you're a Giants fan with high hopes. And I know you work with a lot of Giants fans, and it feels like it's going to be another long season for them. Unless there's a quarterback that we don't yet know about, who's going to come save their season for him. Yeah, Daniel Jones, a guy that they've seen kind of what you get out of them and especially if you're not seeing those steps forward, can raise some red flags out there for the Giants. Meanwhile, hey, out in green Bay, it's injury not quarterback play that's keeping their signal caller on the sideline Jordan Love in question after that injury in his season opener out in Brazil Matt LaFleur announced that backup Malik Willis would get the start. Now, considering the Packers being a favorite out of the NFC. If we're being honest, you got to think about what this division looks like. You've got the Lions, you've got the bears. These are teams that a lot of eyes are on. A lot of people are seeing them ascend. Ryan, do you think sticking with the guy they traded for, let's say, a week ago or two weeks ago, is the best route? Or should they perhaps start picking up the phone and making some calls, like maybe we saw the Browns do last year? Yeah, unfortunately. Excuse me, Joe Flacco, who sort of saved the Browns season last year. Right. He helped get them to the playoffs. He's currently on the Colts roster. And guess who the Packers play this week. The Colts. So I don't think he's going to walk across the field and save that game for them. Ryan Tannehill is still out there and he said he would go to the right situation. I don't know if green Bay is the right situation. It feels like a pretty good one, but it sounds like Matt LaFleur is sticking with Malik Willis, who as you pointed out, they just traded for, and they were able to get him because the Titans didn't need him. They have Will Levis. They have Mason Rudolph, the former third round pick, wasn't able to cement a spot on that roster. And now he's going to come into a situation. And he had to throw two deep ball Hail Marys at the end of that game. After Jordan Love got hurt and they went about like you would expect them to. He was cold. He was in another country and the field conditions were terrible. It didn't go well for him. So it feels like this is what's going to have to happen. And they have Sean Clifford, who's been on the roster for a while. He will be number two to Malik. It sounds like they're going to have to run the ball a lot. They'll have to simplify things, probably to another level. Just because Malik is so new in this offense and you got to hope the defense holds up. As I mentioned, they're playing the Colts and then they play the Titans. Malik's old team and those are two AFC games. So they don't necessarily matter as much as the NFC matchups I don't think Jordan's going to be back by week four when they play play play the Vikings and then the Rams after that. But maybe you target the Cardinals game in week six there. So it's not a great situation to be in. If you're going to lose your starting quarterback, you want to lose him in week one as opposed to week 15. But they're going to have to find a way to manufacture some wins and rely heavily on the run game and the defense to do that. And it feels like a tall task because the Colts played really well. The Titans are an interesting team. Maybe they can split those games and then go from there. Yeah, well, more injury news coming out of week one where Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua is headed to the ER with a knee sprain. That means he's going to miss at least the next four weeks. Now, Ryan, just considering how much of an impact player he was for the Rams last season, does this change any way that you might look at them over the next couple of weeks? I love Puka Nacua and he had such a fantastic season and such a fun story. But one of the reasons that he fell until day three of the draft is because of the injury history at BYU. When he's healthy, he is unstoppable, and we saw that last year when Cooper Kupp was down because Puka picked up all the slack. They haven't really played a lot together. We did see Cooper lining up last night when Puka went out. So that's the good news, other than that, the other issue and this might be a bigger issue for me than Puka being out for a few weeks here on the offensive line is an absolute shambles with injuries. And they were down to offensive tackles two and three last night in that game that they took to overtime. And that's probably a bigger concern for Sean McVay and Matthew Stafford. Stafford is 37 years old, played out of his mind again last night but took a ton of hits and he's probably pretty sore this morning. But I think you can survive without Puka. You have to get that offensive line healthy and ready to go to continue to make make some waves here in the coming weeks and then get Puka back in week five or week six, and then you're hitting on all cylinders. But if you're asking me who's in a better situation right now, the Packers or the Rams, it's definitely the Rams. That defense played well last night also. But get Puka healthy, get the offensive line healthy. And I think this team hide your ears because you're a 40 Niners fan I think they have a chance to win that division. Yeah I hear you I hear you kind of sort of. I'm listening, but I'm not listening to you, Ryan. But you're right. The defense did play well and they still do. You got to think about it. We still saw Cooper Kupp go off like the Cooper Kupp that we saw years ago. Once he's healthy. So certainly things boding well at least comparing the Packers and the Rams Ryan as always it's great to have you. It's great to have football back. Thanks so much. And the train keeps rolling as we look forward to week two of the NFL season and HQ. We got you covered. Live previews, highlights and reactions throughout the week. You can find that

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