USC quarterback Caleb Williams and UNC quarterback Drake Maye have been inseparable since they were high school recruits. Just as they are both projected top-five picks in the 2024 NFL draft right now, they were both 5-star recruits three years ago. Williams was the second-ranked quarterback in the class, per 247Sports, while Maye was the fourth.

The difference between the two has always been marginal at best. So it's no surprise that the two are meeting at the top of another round of quarterback rankings, now with the NFL in their sights.

Just like old times, Williams is the preferred option for most. Williams is the consensus top quarterback prospect in the 2024 NFL draft, while Maye trails behind him in second. Both are situated somewhere in the top 10 of any big board, including our most recent big board at Bleacher Report.

With two special quarterback prospects so closely situated at the top of the board, it's worth diving in deeper to see what separates them. That's especially the case because they are so different, almost to the point where they serve as a proxy war over what traits are most valuable in today's NFL at the position.

Williams is the shining example of a post-Patrick Mahomes quarterback prospect. He is creative and quick, and he brings a loose and live arm that produces mind-melting throws under any conditions. Williams is the type of quarterback who lives for chaos, so much so that he invites it just so he can prove that he can conquer it.

Maye is more of the old prototype—tall and athletic with a booming arm. He's a vision of the 1990s gunslingers who whipped the ball all around the field from the pocket but had the spark to make things happen on the move as well. Maye is the type of quarterback prospect whom teams have been chasing for the past 30-plus years.

It isn't enough to say Maye and Williams are both special players who happen to be different. Declaring them both special without leaning one way or the other is boring, even if it is true.

For that reason, we'll analyze these two prospects in seven categories: arm talent, accuracy, pocket management, pre-snap processing, post-snap processing, athleticism and off-script/playmaking.

By the end, hopefully it will become clear why one quarterback is the 1A to the other's 1B.

Arm Talent

Both Maye and Williams have exceptional arm talent. All but a handful of quarterbacks in the NFL would be better off having one of their arms instead of their own.

Deciding which player has the better arm is less about which arm is truly better, but which kind of arm you prefer.

Take Jordan Love of the Green Bay Packers and Justin Herbert of the Los Angeles Chargers, for instance. Both quarterbacks have outrageous arm talent. They are different, though.

Herbert wins more with pure velocity and the ability to deliver strikes down the field. What he gains in speed, he loses a little in touch and elasticity. Love is the inverse.

Love still has very good velocity and distance on his throws, but what makes his arm special is the flexibility of his arm angles and the touch he can add to his throws. At the cost of pure ball speed, Love has more adaptability in how he throws and controls the ball.

That's the split between Maye and Williams. Maye is closer to the Herbert bucket. He can move his arm around and add touch when necessary, but his pure ball speed and ability to unleash 50-yard strikes makes his arm pop off the screen. Williams can absolutely put some RPMs on the ball, but his arm flexibility and delicate touch from any platform are what put his arm over the top.

The coward's answer for this category is that there is no winner. Both players have exceptional arm talent. Splitting the difference comes down more to preference than anything.

(Strong way to kick off this exercise, right?)

Advantage: Push

Accuracy

In a tight race between two excellent quarterback prospects, consistent accuracy might be the biggest difference between Maye and Williams.

At least right now, Williams is more complete and consistent when it comes to accuracy at all three levels. My own charting numbers over at Reception Perception support that.

Williams produced a 70.4 percent adjusted accuracy score, while Maye came in just below that at 69.3 percent. The difference between the two might not seem like much, and it isn't, but the gap in overall accuracy becomes clearer the more you dig in.

Maye's adjusted accuracy score is kind of boosted by his accuracy down the field. He is a special vertical passer, and the numbers support that.

Maye was accurate on 57.1 percent of his throws beyond 20 yards. Go-balls, posts, seams—whatever it is, if Maye gets to uncork one, he's likely going to drop it right in the bucket.

Williams' accuracy carries throughout all three layers of the field, though. That isn't the case for Maye right now.

Williams was accurate on 82.8 percent of throws in the 1-10 yard range. For Maye, that figure is only 78.2 percent. In the 11-20 yard range, Williams delivered a solid 60.4 percent accuracy. Maye came in at an underwhelming 54.1 percent.

Maye's 57.1 percent accuracy beyond 20 yards does take the crown in that range, but Williams' 50.7 percent accuracy down the field is still plenty good as well.

All of that holds up on film, too. Maye is just not as consistently as accurate as Williams. That isn't an inherent talent issue, though. Maye's film also features every throw there is to be made. The consistency is just lacking because his footwork can get all out of sorts, especially once he begins to reset after his initial dropback.

Maye misses a few too many throws as a result of that instability. That won't prevent him from starting or being effective right away, but it does make him fall short of Williams in this particular category.

The good news for Maye is that footwork is very fixable. There's a world where Maye gets NFL coaching in a real offense and shores this issue up in a few years' time.

For now, however, Williams gets the nod here.

Advantage: Williams

Pocket Management

Pocket management is the foundation of good quarterback play. Arm talent and processing ability will only take a quarterback so far if they can't manage the pocket.

That's especially true in the NFL, where defenders are faster, blitzes are more complex and pockets get tighter. Quarterbacking from the pocket is all about being able to play with discomfort or finding ways to make oneself comfortable.

Both Maye and Williams check that box easily. There is zero doubt that both players will be able to operate within tight pockets and escape inoperable pockets when necessary.

However, Maye has an edge in this category. Every aspect of his pocket management rocks.

Maye's demeanor sets the table for everything else. He's never afraid to hang in there and take hits. Maye is also unperturbed when he has to slide around in the pocket to buy time for himself. Some quarterbacks lose sight of the play at large when they have to adjust their throwing station, but not Maye. He remains as cool and focused as ever.

To that end, Maye is an efficient mover in the pocket. He is quick to move when he needs to, but never in a frantic fashion that runs him into trouble. Maye rarely moves more than is necessary to keep himself clean. He even tends to tuck the ball into his chest and away from pressure while he's moving, which is a nice touch to bolster his ball security.

Maye also does well to preempt pressure, which is my favorite skill of his. Whenever he sees blitz looks, he can anticipate where the pressure will come from and drift away from it immediately. It looks like weird, lazy footwork, but in reality, it's Maye's avenue for squeezing every millisecond out of a sticky situation. Sometimes that's the difference between an explosive play and a pressured incompletion.

Williams does a lot of this as well. He plays with his eyes up and shows efficient pocket movement. He's obviously capable of making throws in congested pockets. Any Chicago Bears fans who are worried that Williams is going to be like Justin Fields in the pocket can throw that concern right out the window.

There's just a slightly different level to all of it with Maye. It's the difference between an A and an A+.

Advantage: Maye

Pre-Snap Processing

There's a lot that goes into pre-snap processing. Anything from understanding coverage tells to identifying blitzes to setting protections can all fall under that bucket.

In general, these skills help set the floor for an offense. They allow the quarterback to make quick throws and avoid negative plays.

As with most categories, Maye and Williams are in a tight race here. Both are mature quarterbacks before the snap. You see plenty of flashes from both of picking out a defense's weakness before the snap and attacking it immediately with great success.

However, there is one aspect of pre-snap processing that makes me favor Maye overall: blitz identification.

Again, it isn't that Williams can't do that. He definitely understands how to beat the blitz with the ball and can often get himself out of a jam. Maye is just a slight step above him.

Maye is sensational when it comes to seeing blitzes and managing the protection accordingly. If the play call dictated that North Carolina had to be in five-man protection (as was often the case), Maye also showed the ability to handle the free runner. He has an awesome ability to slide away from the free rusher and into the side he wants to throw the ball to if that's the better option than beating the blitz with the ball.

Very rarely will you find instances of Maye looking out of sorts versus the blitz. That's enough to just barely push him over Williams in this category.

Advantage: Maye

Post-Snap Processing

Just like pre-snap processing, there's a lot you can bucket into post-snap processing.

Identifying and adjusting to coverage rotations is a big one, as is being able to tailor one's internal clock to how many pass-rushers get sent after the quarterback. It also includes a quarterback's ability to go through his progressions in a timely manner and land on the right target. Sometimes it's just being able to quickly recognize when a structured play is dead.

Neither Maye nor Williams got to show off the full scope of their post-snap processing in college. Their respective teams made it so difficult to get clear snapshots of it.

For Maye, the issue was UNC's offensive line and rather vanilla offensive design. A lot of the North Carolina offense was built on 2x2 spread concepts. Maye looked fantastic when he was allowed to work through full-field progressions, but those moments came few and far between, and the offensive line often ruined those chances in dramatic fashion.

The same was kind of true for Williams. Lincoln Riley's offense didn't look the same without the offensive line he was used to at Oklahoma. In turn, the offense was reduced to poorly executed one-off designs and a flurry of cheap run-pass options.

Williams, like Maye, looked capable and confident when executing full-bodied passing concepts. He just didn't get those chances nearly as often as he will in the NFL.

I'm not at all worried about either quarterback's ability to operate post-snap, though. Both Maye and Williams play with sharp timing and execution. Both of them understand when and how to be aggressive, just as well as they understand when to kill a play.

Maye and Williams can each fill out a 10-minute highlight reel, yet they both also threw the ball away on at least 3.6 percent of their pass attempts in my charting sample. It takes a certain level of maturity to live for the next down by throwing the ball away in the heat of the moment. Maye and Williams have that.

Like the arm talent category, I'm taking the coward's way out with this one. Maye and Williams are both excellent post-snap processors. Maybe Maye operates over the middle of the field better and Williams is a better abstract problem-solver, but both comfortably clear the bar for what it takes to be a good processor in the NFL.

Advantage: Push

Athleticism

Both Maye and Williams are awesome athletes. One being slightly better than the other in this category isn't a knock on anyone. NFL quarterbacks have to be mobile these days, and neither of these guys would be considered elite prospects if they couldn't move around.

Much like their arm talent, there's a juxtaposition between Maye and Williams' athletic skill sets.

Maye is a strider. He's big, explosive and agile for his size, but the hallmark of his rushing style is that he can really get moving in a straight line and he's tough to bring down.

Maye's rushing style is somewhere in the Daniel Jones, Colin Kaepernick or Josh Allen realm. He is the kind of athlete a team should want to use in the designed run game, be it with quarterback draws or option plays on the perimeter. Maye can scramble a bit as well, but he's less of a "make you miss" type and more of a "covers a ton of ground in three strides" guy.

Williams is a teleporter. He is smaller, nimbler and quicker than Maye. His balance is impeccable, teetering on the edge of incomprehensible for a quarterback. One moment, he's inches away from being within a defensive end's grasp, but then—poof—he magically appears outside the pocket and well clear of danger.

Williams can make a defender miss in a phone booth and quickly fire off a burst of acceleration to get out of there. He's still a threat to pick up 15 yards once outside the pocket, but his real calling card is how easily he escapes danger in the first place and always presents himself with new opportunities. It's a gift that few share.

This is probably a "pick your poison" situation like the arm talent category, but I'm taking a firmer stance here. I would rather have Maye's skill set.

Maye is bigger and faster. It's as simple as that. There's more juice to squeeze from Maye as a designed runner, and he's more likely to be able to handle some of the hits he'll take in the NFL than Williams.

Advantage: Maye

Off-Script/Playmaking

Playmaking might be the funniest category to talk about between these two categories. It's tragic for Maye, really.

Maye is an awesome playmaker. He is aggressive, creative and has a little bit of Josh Allen brain. It's hard to watch his left-handed touchdown versus Pitt or the fourth-down conversion against Duke where he's being dragged into the dirt and not appreciate his irrational confidence. If Maye's playmaking were rated on a scale of 1-100, he'd firmly be in the 90s.

Williams is a 100 on that scale, though. Maybe a 105. He's just different.

Williams makes three or four plays a game that don't look like anyone but Mahomes. That's a lofty and unfair comparison overall, but your brain can't help but go there in those moments.

Williams' creativity extends to every aspect of his game. Within the pocket, Williams finds unique throwing lanes and arm angles. The same can be said for his work outside the pocket. Williams attempted a handful of skyhook passes on the run this year like a miniature Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in pads.

Even when the funky arm angles aren't necessary, Williams' creativity is apparent. He is willing to move around in ways and attempt throws most quarterbacks wouldn't dare. It all feels so outlandish and imprecise at first glance, but the more you see Williams work his magic, the more you feel there's a method to it.

Williams sees the game faster and clearer than most everyone else when the bullets are flying, and he has the talent to capitalize on even his most ambitious impulses. There's also data to support Williams' ability to figure it out on the fly.

Per my own charting at Reception Perception, 7.4 percent of Williams' sampled pass attempts were unchartable routes. They were scramble drills, more or less. That's an exceptionally high number (more of a product of USC's offense than Williams' faults, to be clear), yet Williams was accurate on 69.4 percent of those attempts. Executing at a nearly 70 percent clip on broken plays with that kind of volume is just silly.

Williams is lights-out in the red zone, too. He had plenty of in-structure throws within the red zone, but he also had opportunities to make something out of nothing in the most constricted area of the field. On 65 charted red-zone attempts, Williams was accurate on 73.9 percent of them, which was the highest mark among the consensus top-four quarterbacks by more than 8 percentage points.

And that's just as a passer. Go watch Williams' performance versus Arizona State this year if you need proof of his ability to make something happen with his legs in the red zone.

Williams truly has an answer for everything. Yes, some of his creative decisions go horribly wrong, but that's the price of admission.

Mahomes and Allen are the same way. So was Brett Favre. Andrew Luck and Matthew Stafford, too. That's just how it goes with guys who are wired to win the game at any cost and have the tools to make it possible.

Williams can be that caliber of playmaker.

Advantage: Williams

Verdict

The final tally is exactly as close as you would expect: three for Maye, two for Williams, two draws.

Simple math would tell you Maye is QB1 through this exercise. It's not just "winning" more categories that puts Maye over the top for me, though. Earning the edge in pocket management specifically is what makes Maye the 1A to Williams' 1B.

Arm talent and pocket management should be the two non-negotiables for an elite quarterback prospect. A player has to check both of those boxes without hesitation. Both Maye and Williams certainly do, and both are winners in the arm talent department.

As such, Maye getting the slight edge in pocket management is the ultimate decider.

Maye is calm, clean and efficient in the pocket without sacrificing aggression at all. It's a fine line to walk. Most top-10 quarterbacks can do it; most quarterbacks outside the top 10 fall to one side or the other.

Williams also manages the pocket very well, but Maye is just slightly better. Sometimes that's all that separates two great prospects from one another.

For that reason, I'm not a "Maye or the highway" guy. Maye is my top quarterback, but the margin is razor-thin. Anyone who prefers Williams won't get any derision from me.

Both Maye and Williams are worth the No. 1 overall pick. As in, turn in the pick in January and don't think about it for the next three months—that kind of No. 1 overall pick.

A choice has to be made, though. For me, that choice is Maye.

Final Verdict: Drake Maye

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