New QB Index Stat Completely Misses the Point on Caleb Williams

The 2026 offseason has been a tremendous time for Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams. From making franchise history as the cover athlete for Madden 27 to earning a spot in ESPN's ranking of the top NFL quarterbacks, everything has been coming up roses for Caleb Williams, until now.

Austin Mock, an NFL data analyst for The Athletic, unveiled a new quarterback stat he helped create: QB Index, or QBI. Making its debut on Monday, Mock unveiled his QB Index stock report, a ranking of all quarterbacks from the 2025 season, and it placed Caleb Williams as QB23 with a score of 99 (a 100 score indicates an average quarterback).

Mock intends for QBI to become the gold standard of how we evaluate NFL quarterbacks. With all due respect, it looks like this stat still needs some tweaks if it has Williams down around Kirk Cousins and Baker Mayfield. Even more damning is the placement of career journeyman Marcus Mariota (QB14) and five-time Pro Bowler Jared Goff (QB22).

Caleb Williams' play defies the spreadsheet

In fairness to Mock, he knows that his model isn't perfect. He gave a tongue-in-cheek headline to his article, calling it, "A perfect QB stat everyone will love, and no one will disagree with." Further, Mock devoted four whole paragraphs trying to explain how Williams ranked so low.

"[Williams] finished 21st in dropback success rate among qualified quarterbacks last year," Mock wrote. "QBI really didn't like how inefficient Williams was despite boasting pristine protection... QBI did like that Williams avoided negative plays, as he limited both interceptions and sacks, but overall, the down-to-down efficiency just wasn't there."

Clearly this ranking is not arbitrary. The logic is explained well enough and, in a vacuum, it makes sense. But it still completely misses the point. The fact is that there's a big aspect of Caleb Williams' play that cannot be quantified on a spreadsheet: the clutch factor.

No one came up better in more big moments last year than Williams, who led an NFL record seven fourth quarter comebacks. Data analysts may not like to deal with something that can't be assigned a number, but that doesn't make it meaningless. As Williams explained in his 'Hot Ones' appearance, "I think some people have [the clutch gene] and some people don't... I think some things you can't research, some things you can't put into a lab."

Evaluating a player's clutch gene is similar to the eye test. It's not something that can be properly quantified, but not everything that matters can be. At some point, you must ask yourself whether the stats or the rankings match what you're seeing on the field. In this case, could anyone really name 22 quarterbacks that were better than Williams in 2025? Even the biggest Packers fan would probably be unable to do so.

Caleb Williams' improvement is lost in a full-season evaluation

There's one other flaw to Mock's QBI stock report, and that's the simplistic picture it paints. His ranking is a snapshot of the entire season, and there's no denying that there were times, especially early in the season, when Williams looked unplayable. His Week 7 dud against the Saints was particularly bad. This game and a handful of others dragged down his overall grade.

However, it's equally undeniable that Williams' showed vast improvement in the second half of the season. His Week 17 performance, when he almost pulled off another crazy comeback against the 49ers, was arguably the best he looked all year, and that momentum continued into the playoffs. In the Divisional round against the Rams, Williams posted a 70.4 QBR, his sixth-best grade of the season.

Far better is it for a quarterback to struggle early and catch fire later in the season. In fact, Williams' 2025 season was eerily similar to his rival Jordan Love's 2023 season. After a rough first half to his debut season, Love locked in and proved he was the Packers' franchise quarterback. That's what we saw from Williams last year, in my opinion.

Contrast that with fellow 2024 draftee Drake Maye. Maye finished as the MVP runner-up in the regular season last year, but his four-game playoff run was historically bad, even worse than Chicago's Rex Grossman in 2006. This isn't to say that Maye is doomed, but I feel much more confidence that Williams will take another step in 2026 than I feel for Maye.

The Bottom Line

As aforementioned, Mock's new QB Index is an interesting yet limited view of quarterbacks, which Mock himself readily admits. The very fact that Williams ranked as the QB23, and that Mock took the time to explain how this happened, is further proof that this new stat is far from perfect. There's no reason for Bears fans to crash out over this new ranking, but it will be something worth monitoring as the 2026 season progresses.

The QB Index has good bones. It does a commendable job of focusing solely on how a quarterback helps or hinders his team on any given play. If Caleb Williams is the guy that everyone in Chicago believes that he is, then by the end of Week 1 he'll have rocketed towards the top of the index and will remain there throughout the season.

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