Caleb Williams explains anger over sitting behind Spencer Rattler: 'I was the best in the country'

Caleb Williams has never lacked confidence or ability as a quarterback, primary reasons why he’s slated to go No. 1 in the 2024 NFL Draft.

But even as a true freshman back at Oklahoma, Williams arrived in Norman expecting to take over the starting quarterback job immediately. Now, that’s not a crazy task for a rookie with Williams’ recruiting pedigree, except for the fact that Oklahoma already had the next spring’s projected top draft pick, Spencer Rattler, starting.

Everyone knows the story by now. Rattler struggled to start the season and Williams eventually got his shot and took over as the QB1 the rest of the way. Both would transfer after the season, with Rattler chasing a fresh start at South Carolina while Williams followed Lincoln Riley to USC and started two seasons as a Trojan.

Now that he’s headed off to the pros, though, Williams went back and revisited his freshman season on the Pivot Podcast, explaining just how upset he was not to have taken over for Rattler sooner.

“I told people before I went there that I was going to start and play and beat him out. I thought I’d beat him out in Spring and he was projected No. 1 and all of that,” said Williams. “He started for six games, and so, I kept preparing.”

He was especially irked by Coach Riley’s simple comment to him amid any hope he’d take the job from Rattler.

“Lincoln told me ‘keep going.’ It’s something that I didn’t understand, those two words, I did not understand when he told me, because I wasn’t asking him. I wasn’t coming to him to beg for playing time. I never came to him.

“I came to him and asked him ‘How do I do it? How do I beat this dude out?’ Because he never let me get reps with the first team, he never let me get reps with the older guys and things like that. So I took advantage of my reps I got, I put my head down, and at a certain point, I felt like I beat him out. At some point, I went up and asked Lincoln again, I said ‘how do I beat him out?’ He told me ‘keep going,’ he didn’t give me any other advice, so that’s his words that he told me.”

A stonewall of a response like that left Williams a little bit bothered, especially as Rattler continued to struggle on the field.

“I was so angry, so frustrated, because that wasn’t what I wanted to hear, because I felt like I was the best. I felt like I could have helped us win all the games, getting more reps, and I didn’t get those reps.”

But hard work finally payed off for Caleb Williams, and as he predicted heading into his freshman season, he did take the job from Rattler and never looked back.

“So I kept preparing as best that I could, so when I had my moment, there was no way that he was ever going to get it back. When I got my shot, yeah, nothing else is going to happen other than me being the guy.”

And thus, Williams became the guy for Lincoln Riley the rest of that 2021 season and on through 2022 and 2023 at USC.