Answering big questions on second-year NFL quarterbacks - ESPN

Summer is always a good time to go back to last year's rookies and review how they performed — I just did so for the 2024 wide receiver class. For the 2024 quarterback class, though, I needed no excuse. Five of the six first-rounders saw game action last season, and all of them bring fascinating storylines into Year 2. Can Jayden Daniels repeat — or even improve upon — his stellar season? What will Caleb Williams look like free of the doomed Matt Eberflus era? What can three starts tell us about Michael Penix Jr.'s sudden rise to QB1 in Atlanta?

It is not an exaggeration to consider this class, which also includes Drake Maye and Bo Nix and J.J. McCarthy in the top 12 picks, on par with the 2018 class that delivered Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, and Baker Mayfield (and Sam Darnold, if we are to believe his career resurgence). Williams, Daniels, Maye and Nix all showed plenty of proof that they'll be long-term starters in the league, and Penix and McCarthy each have reasons to share in such belief.

I asked one pressing question about each of the rising sophomore quarterbacks, then tried my best to answer it.

Jump to a question about:
Daniels | Maye | McCarthy
Nix | Penix | Rattler | Williams

With Williams, it is important to begin with a reminder. Watch this third-and-14 late in the season against the Lions.

pic.twitter.com/0jLWzP95pU

This is an impossibly difficult throw. I'm not even sure how you teach this throw. Many right-handed quarterbacks make acrobatic, momentum-defining throws moving to their right, which is intuitive — the throwing arm is still back, and the rotation of the hips and trunk are still involved in generating power for the throw. To access this much velocity, while throwing an accurate ball away from