Rams made the blueprint for parting with failed QB picks

Posted September 10, 2025

This is not the stat that Jared Goff or the Lions wanted to see on Sunday: The former Rams number one overall pick has never won an NFL game without Sean McVay or Ben Johnson calling plays for him. He’s 0-19-1 in those situations.

When a team drafts a quarterback with the number one overall pick and then fires the head coach after one season or less together — a common outcome for those bad teams — they will do anything in their power to avoid admitting that the pick is a bust. That often means hiring an offensive-minded play caller as the new head coach, which is exactly what the Rams did when they fired Jeff Fisher partway through Goff’s rookie season and then hired McVay a couple of months later.

Then in 2021, the Rams admitted defeat, it just took a few years.

They traded Goff to the Lions, and then some time later Detroit made one of their best coaching changes in team history by promoting Ben Johnson to full-time offensive coordinator. Over three seasons together, Johnson and Goff thrived and achieved greater statistical highs than even Goff’s best days with McVay…albeit not with a Super Bowl appearance like what he did with L.A. in 2018.

Now cut to the first week of 2025, Johnson is the head coach of the Chicago Bears, and you have to wonder if he’s in the same situation with Caleb Williams that McVay once found himself in with Goff:

Yeah, maybe you can find a way to make this work. But if these situations are anything like what the L.A. Rams found themselves in with Goff after a few years under McVay, the end result could be admitting that the pick is simply a bad one.

The Rams created a blueprint for how to survive a questionable draft pick at quarterback:

  • Hire the best play caller in the NFL who isn’t already a head coach
  • Try that for a while
  • If that doesn’t work, keep the play caller and trade the quarterback for the best upgrade/return you can find

The Rams acquired Matthew Stafford — an undeniable veteran talent when he was traded — and immediately won a Super Bowl. L.A. managed to make this move even though Goff’s 2019 contract extension had yet to even kick in!

Ben Johnson is the head coach and offensive coordinator that the Bears want for years to come, probably even more than they want to see Caleb Williams become the franchise quarterback that he was billed to be a couple of years ago when he won the Heisman at USC. How many teams could try to copy the Rams by choosing play caller over an overhyped quarterback?

Bears: Ben Johnson, Caleb Williams

It’s obviously still very early in Caleb’s career and he could soon look like one of the top young quarterbacks in the NFL. But what if he doesn’t?

There seems to be a lot wrong with Caleb’s game and maybe the reason he has thrown so few interceptions is that he’s having such a hard time throwing catchable passes — to anyone. It’s not as though there weren’t some people arguing that Caleb Williams had become one of the most overrated prospects of this generation even before the draft happened:

Call a spade a spade: There is at least one quarterback from the 2024 draft class who is miles ahead of him (Jayden Daniels), two more who have played better than him so far (Drake Maye, Bo Nix), one who just out-performed him on Monday night (J.J. McCarthy), and a fifth who has also played better on a smaller sample size (Michael Penix).

There are an incredible six NFL starters from the 2024 draft class and the only one who Caleb Williams appears to be better than is Spencer Rattler. And that debate is a lot closer than it should be.

It’s too early to say that the Bears should or will trade Williams at some point, but that IS the conversation that fans will be having at the end of the season if he doesn’t start playing ten times better than he has so far. With how he performed in Week 1, there is a chance that Chicago will once again be picking high in the 2026 draft and with some chance at taking yet another quarterback, someone who Ben Johnson might see as a more Goff-like processor (if not Tyson Bagent), that the Bears will be listening to offers for Williams.

If you think that’s absurd, you are forgetting that Zach Wilson was traded after 3 years with the Jets; Trey Lance was traded after 2 years with the 49ers; Justin Fields was traded after 3 years with the Bears; Mac Jones was traded after 3 years with the Patriots; and Kenny Pickett was traded after 2 years with the Steelers.

In the first round of the draft from 2021-2022, quarterbacks were less likely to make their fourth season with a team than they were assured to make it.

This is just a precursor to the certainly doomed fate of first round pick Anthony Richardson with the Colts in 2023, borderline first round pick Will Levis of the Titans, and possibly first overall pick Bryce Young, who was arguably the worst starter in the NFL last week.

Richardson could be traded during his third season and Levis was only not traded because he’s on IR.

The 49ers gave up on Lance only a few months after the third of three first round picks they traded for him was even used!

So could Caleb Williams actually be traded in 2026 if he’s bad in 2025? That’s not a hot take. That’s what teams are normally doing now if a quarterback is still bad after two seasons in the league, no matter how high he was drafted.

Panthers: Bryce Young, Dave Canales

The Panthers love Canales because of what he did for Baker Mayfield on the Bucs in 2023. They wanted him to do the same for Young as what he did for Mayfield, as well as spending his entire career in Seattle when Russell Wilson was the quarterback. The bad news?

It just isn’t working yet.

 

Yes, Bryce Young’s supporting cast was pitiful in Week 1. But aside from a few statistically decent games at the end of last season, he’s been horrifically bad for an NFL starter. In Week 1, Young averaged only 4.4 yards per attempt and threw 2 interceptions with 51% completions and he was going against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

He also lost a fumble (his fifth fumble in his last 5 games) and had his worst passer rating game in a year.

If it continues like this, the Panthers will once again turn to Andy Dalton and they will put Bryce Young on the trade block. That’s what will happen because Carolina would probably rather trust Canales than the risky quarterback pick in 2023 who has yet to punch above his height through two seasons and change.

Jaguars: Trevor Lawrence, Liam Coen

Lawrence is a mediocre quarterback with a galactic-sized reputation for being something far better than he actually is. The former 5-star recruit and generational talent who was supposed to be the next Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck is far more like Eli Manning and Oliver Luck.

Yet for some reason the Jaguars still paid Lawrence a second contract, a mistake that the team is trying to correct by hiring Coen for the same reason that Carolina hired Canales: He did great work with Mayfield.

Hey everyone, maybe Baker Mayfield is just a good quarterback!

The Jaguars have now gone all-out to try and over-correct their Trevor Lawrence contract problem by hiring Coen as the new HC/OC (with former Vikings assistant Grant Udinski) and trading next year’s first round pick to move up for Travis Hunter as a complement to Brian Thomas Jr.. Lucky for them, running back Travis Etienne was the player balling out in Week 1 and the Jaguars are 1-0.

But if Lawrence is not significantly better than he’s been the past two seasons (completing 60% of his passes for 5.7 Y/A against the Panthers in Week 1 was not the start that Jacksonville expected with all these resources put into the passing game), general manager James Gladstone (from the Rams org.) should and will consider trade offers in 2026. Especially since Jacksonville now doesn’t have a 2026 first round pick.

Other weird QB/HC situations

  • If things don’t get better, the Dolphins will probably fire Mike McDaniel AND part with Tua Tagovailoa; neither of them seem to be the answer
  • Anthony Richardson is a good bet to be on a new team in 2026, same as Levis; he’s probably just not even a serviceable quarterback in almost any regard
  • Kyler Murray would likely be “fired” by the Cardinals before Jonathan Gannon, giving Arizona’s regime a chance to pick their own QB
  • The Cowboys would trade Dak Prescott if they could, but they almost certainly can’t do that before 2027

The Rams, as they often have under Les Snead and Sean McVay, have set the precedent for how to win football games consistently by knowing when it’s time to give up on a quarterback and not being afraid to eat the financial bullet to get it done. L.A. even had to sacrifice first round picks to make it happen.

Other teams have clearly followed suit and copied the Rams and will continue to do so in the coming months. It’s only been one week of this season, so far too early to say how many of these quarterbacks will be on the move in the next year, but you can bet teams are far less patient with signal callers than they used to be because we now how small those windows are to attack for a Super Bowl.

You’re never going to win those battles with quarterbacks who have played as poorly as Caleb Williams, Bryce Young, and Trevor Lawrence. First pick doesn’t mean last out.

Jaylen Brown Reveals He Rejected Nike's $50 Million Deal To Not Compromise His Voice And Freedom

Boston Celtics superstar Jaylen Brown is known for being a leader, both on and off the court. The 28-year-old is an outspoken individual. While this is admirable, it has been a trait that brands find particularly challenging to manage.

Brown's stance against signing deals with large brands is well known, especially with his publicized ongoing feud with Nike. Recently, however, the Celtics star revealed why he rejected a $50 million deal with the apparel giant to start his own brand on the "Big Tigger Morning Show". He said:

"You sign these contracts, you have these little catchphrases that be in there. Like, if you say anything controversial, or anything that disrupts our ecosystem of our company, we can terminate your deal, terminate your contract. So that kind of makes you not have a voice." 

"So a lot of our celebrities and our athletes, they never speak up, they never say anything, because they risk whatever their contract is if they do. So I don't like compromising my voice for nothing and nobody. So I just told them I'd pass."

The host then asked Brown about his decision to alter his shoes by removing the brand logo and whether the feud with Nike had been dealt with since. The star admitted that there had been no resolution regarding his beef with Nike, but he added:

"At the time, nothing was working out just because of the way my brain was thinking. But I needed to wear shoes, and Nike had the best shoes in the market. But I wasn't signed to them, so I wasn't going to give no free advertisement."

To bypass this, Brown started wearing Kobe's. But due to the brand belonging to Nike, he needed to take the logo off, effectively resulting in him wearing "boneless Kobe's".

"Kobe's the reason why I started my brand now, my own sneaker brand, where I can come up with my own rules instead of having to follow somebody else's."

Brown's stance against the restraints placed upon athletes by brands has been viewed as inspiring. When considering the kind of treatment some players have had to endure, like Kyrie Irving's contract termination with Nike, the Celtics star makes a valid point about not wanting to compromise on his freedom of expression and opinion.

However, this decision has been costly for the 28-year-old in its own way. While giving up a significant sum of money is worth noting, his feud with Nike may have had more serious consequences, as it supposedly resulted in the star being snubbed from representing his country at official tournaments.

The back-and-forth between Brown and Nike has continued ever since, as both parties take shots at each other. Regardless, with the creation of his own brand, "741", whose products range from footwear to clothing, the 28-year-old has managed to maintain his integrity while also being successful in his professional endeavors.

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