NFL Network’s Kurt Warner on Whether Bears QB Caleb Williams is “Elite”

Is Caleb Williams an elite quarterback? Kurt Warner's answer is not yet. But the NFL Network analyst likes where Williams is headed, and he pinpointed the change that has him most impressed.

Rich put the question to Warner directly. "I hold elite at a whole different standard," Warner said. "There's only four or five maybe at any one time that fall into that elite category. And I'm not ready to put Caleb there yet."

That's the bar. Everything else Warner said was about how close Williams is getting. "I love the ascension. I love what I see from him," he said.

The surprise for Warner is when the improvement showed up. Usually, he explained, a player coming back from an injury looks sluggish and rusty at first. Williams has done the opposite. "I've seen a quarterback that to me has more command in the pocket, has more patience in the pocket since he came back from the injury."

Warner wondered aloud whether the hamstring forced the issue. If Williams couldn't move or run while practicing his way back, he may have been forced to play inside the pocket and gotten more comfortable doing it. Whatever the reason, Warner has seen it the last few weeks: "a quarterback that plays inside the pocket and is patient and knows what he's looking at. If he doesn't like it, he gets to his check down."

Warner pointed to Monday night against Seattle as proof. On the first drive, with nothing open and plenty of time, Williams "hung in there and hung in there and then he rolled to his right and made a nice throw to Loveland for a first down." Later, when the pocket broke down and someone had his leg, he pulled out of it and made another play. But beyond those moments, Warner said, Williams wasn't bailing on dropbacks.

That's the breakthrough. "He's not panicking taking off trying to create, which I think we saw at times in his college career and early in his NFL career," Warner said. "That to me has been the biggest breakthrough that I've seen from him."

He tied it directly to Williams' 71% completion rate. The thinking, as Warner described it: the first read isn't there, so "I don't have to run around and try to make a hero play, throw my check down, get a completion and let's keep the chains going." He saw that on Monday night, especially on a 17-play opening drive that was all about "just taking what's in front of you."

His summary for Rich was both a compliment and a hold. "He's playing really good football. I'm just not ready to put him in that elite category yet."