Two Years Later, That Historic 2024 QB Class Still Has Us Scratching Our Heads on Who Was Actually Best

You know what I love about football? The fact that we're not always right the first time. We make these declarations with absolute certainty, we write them in stone, and then two years later we're sitting around wondering if maybe, just maybe, we had the whole thing backwards. That's exactly where we are right now with the 2024 quarterback class, and brother, what a mess it is in the best possible way.

When April 2024 rolled around, we all acted like we had it figured out. The consensus seemed pretty clear cut in the way consensus usually is in the NFL. You had Caleb Williams going first overall to the Bears, and he was the consensus generational talent, the guy who'd played at a school that gets national television coverage, the guy whose name everybody knew because he had been on SportsCenter more times than some starting quarterbacks get action. Jayden Daniels went second to Washington, and Drake Maye went third to New England. It all made sense at the time because these were the three guys everyone agreed were head and shoulders above the rest of the class.

But here's the thing about "head and shoulders above the rest." Two years is a long time in professional football. Two years is enough time for completely grown men to learn a professional system, to get beat up in ways they never anticipated, to have bad weeks and good weeks and figure out who they really are when the bright lights are on. Two years is enough to look back at what looked obvious and go, "Wait, what were we thinking?"

Let's start with Caleb Williams because he's the guy who was supposed to make this all simple. The Bears took him number one overall, and there was real legitimate belief that they had found their franchise quarterback. He was the Heisman winner. He had the tools. He had the swagger. He had played in a big time program and looked great doing it. Then he had to walk into the NFL, and the NFL, let me tell you, does not care about any of that. The NFL is a place where you have to prove it every single Sunday against men who have been playing this game at the highest level their entire professional lives. Caleb had some good moments, sure, but he also had stretches where you could see the wheels spinning, see him trying to do too much, see him struggling with the decision making that separates the good quarterbacks from the great ones. Now I'm not here to bash the guy because he's got all the physical tools in the world, but I will say this: the coronation that happened in April 2024 started feeling a lot less certain when you actually had to watch him throw the football against the Packers and the Lions and all these guys.

Then you've got Jayden Daniels, and here's where it gets interesting. Daniels went second, and for a lot of people, that felt like a reach at the time. "Why are we taking him over Drake Maye?" people said. "Why is he second?" But you know what? Daniels has shown up and done some things that have made people go back and check the tape. He's been mobile in ways that looked good on the film, but he's also been poised in the pocket in ways that you really couldn't guarantee from college tape. He's made throws that go, "Oh, okay, I see why Washington took him this high." There's a real quarterback in there, and I think the further you get away from the 2024 draft, the more people are realizing that maybe he wasn't second because of some mistake, but because the people doing the evaluating actually saw something.

And then there's Drake Maye. Oh man, Drake Maye is the guy everyone wants to talk about now, isn't he? Because New England took him third, and there was this feeling that maybe, just maybe, they reached. This narrative built that Maye was going to be interesting but probably not a top three pick, that the Patriots were being too aggressive with the talent evaluation, that maybe they were falling in love with his athletic ability and his pedigree and his name and not actually seeing a guy who was ready for the NFL right away. But here's what happens in the real world: Drake Maye got drafted by Bill Belichick's organization, which meant he went into a system designed to develop quarterbacks without throwing them into the fire. He sat and he learned and he watched, and when he finally got on the field, something clicked. You could see it. You could see a young man who understood what defenses were doing, who had the physical tools to make plays off schedule, who had the kind of presence that reminds you why some guys just have it and some guys don't.

When you sit back now and ask yourself "who would you take first in a redraft," the answer isn't as clean as it was two years ago. That's what makes it so fascinating. Caleb Williams probably goes first again because he's the highest ceiling guy, but now you're wondering if he's going to hit that ceiling or if he's going to be a guy who is perpetually on the edge of being great without quite getting there. Jayden Daniels is looking a lot smarter, a lot less like a reach, a lot more like a guy who was evaluated correctly by a front office that really knew what they were doing. Drake Maye is the guy who might be the biggest winner in a redraft scenario because he's shown something that you really couldn't guarantee from college tape.

This is what separates good quarterback evaluation from great quarterback evaluation. Good evaluation looks at what a guy did in college and projects it to the pros. Great evaluation understands that the pros are a different animal entirely, that you're looking at incomplete information, that you have to make decisions with the knowledge that you might be wrong. The 2024 quarterback class is a perfect example of why humility matters in this game. We all thought we knew. We all had our certainties. And then two years happened, and it turned out the certainties weren't quite as certain as we thought.

For fans, this should matter because it reminds you that the draft is not a science. It's an art form. It's people trying to see into the future with incomplete information and the best intentions. Some teams are going to be right, some teams are going to be wrong, and some teams are going to be right in ways they didn't expect. The 2024 quarterback class is going to give us stories for years. We're going to talk about what could have been, what actually happened, and what we got wrong on draft day. That's football, baby. That's why we love it.