The former Saints coach think that highly of the current USC quarterback.
Caleb Williams has been a revelation at USC this year, setting himself up to potentially win the Heisman Trophy and will enter next year as the early favorite to be the top pick in the 2024 NFL draft.
Williams has been so impressive that NFL teams and coaches have already taken note. In fact, former Saints coach Sean Payton believes Williams is the type of player that could get teams to outright tank for the first pick.
As a result, Payton believes Williams’s presence in the 2024 draft could ultimately lead to a draft lottery.
“I think he’s a generational player,” Payton said Monday on The Herd. “At some point, especially with the relationship our league has in gaming now, we're going to move to a lottery system in the NFL. This is a player that possibly does that.”
Williams still has another year before he can enter the league, and Payton essentially predicts that bad teams may decide to actively tank in a way that hasn’t before. The former Saints coach referenced the continued rise of legalized gambling as the NFL’s potential motivation behind a lottery if that does occur.
Payton also mentioned that he recalls two teams outwardly tanking for a top draft pick, the Eagles two years ago vs. the Giants and the Buccaneers in 2014 vs. Payton’s Saints. Tampa Bay ended up drafting Jameis Winston first overall the following offseason, while Philadelphia moved up a few spots to No. 6 in that upcoming draft.
With MLB moving to a draft lottery next year for the first time, the NFL is now the only of the four major sports to stick with a traditional draft order, where the worse the team the better the pick. In general, the nature of the league has made it so tanking isn’t as big of a problem as it is in other sports, but maybe Caleb Williams will change that.