Malik Willis Profile: Why the Tennessee Titans drafted the QB in the 2022 NFL Draft
The Tennessee Titans picked Malik Willis with the 86th pick in the 2022 NFL draft.
A top-500 overall recruit back in 2017, Auburn’s coaching staff (wrongly) chose Bo Nix over Willis and forced his decision to transfer to Liberty. He immediately got on the field and completely transformed this Flames offense in 2020 (and ’21).
In 23 combined games with the Flames, he completed 62.4 percent of his passes for 5,107 yards, 47 touchdowns and 18 interceptions, to go with 1,822 yards on the ground and 27 more touchdowns, which also easily led the team.
Malik Willis' strengths
The ball absolutely jumps out of Willis’ hands, and he has velocity up the you know what. He can throw a hole through the chest of his receivers or send them 60+ yards down the field. There’s a deliberateness to his dropbacks, but then he can set and fling it over the last line of defense or escape the rush in the blink of an eye.
There is, however, a general misconception for Willis’ accuracy. When he sees the man break open or on just simple quick throws, the ball is right on the money about 90 percent of the time. And that’s to all areas of the field, whether he has to drive the ball to the sideline from the opposite hash or has to put air underneath it and, when needed, drop it in before a safety can come over.
Quick hitches and speed outs to the far side of the field are certainly on the table. You get him a good X receiver, and they can work the boundary over and over again, hitting curls right out of the break, hitting back-shoulder fades on a line, along with obviously being able to let it fly down the field.
Yet, while he wants to throw the ball at 100 miles per hour. Usually, he can take a lot off it on easy slide and swing routes, as well as if somebody is wide open and there’s no power needed. Willis has easy zip toward the sideline on rollouts to either side.
Yet if the safety that way sells out for routes near the white line and voids his area, as a backside post is run at an inclined angle, he will let it fly to break the defense’s back as well. The way he can chuck it across half the field at nearly full speed and off the wrong foot is just silly.
Willis simply didn’t get many easy throws presented to him, as the offense often relied on him to either deliver big throws down the field or make something happen with his legs. PFF gave him the highest big-time throw percentage in college football last season at 10.7%, along with being second among all quarterbacks in rushing yards. There wasn’t a ton of help from his teammates, being pressured on 36.7 percent of his dropbacks and seeing eight percent of his passes dropped.
Even with a lot of tight windows in zone coverage with how predictable the Flames’ dropback game was, the way Willis can teleport the ball almost to spot 15-20 yards away before the closest defender can even take two steps toward the target is pretty crazy. It was believed that better rhythm and marrying to pass concepts had been seen in his footwork from 2020.
Yet, if the defense is all over one of their concepts and somebody is right there in position to pick up cross-releases etc., he’s patient with letting his receivers work away from the coverage and then ripping the throw to eliminate any angle to re-enter the catch window.
When the offense was trying to sneak somebody behind the defense, Willis has shown the ability to purposefully stare down one target to open up space, as well as sell the initial break on double-moves. Something similar you see is selling rollouts to set up killer throwback screens or fading away to open space for the back as he floats it over the pass-rush.
Willis absolutely fires some passes into cover-two holes at the sideline, where the safeties is over the top and the receiver at the sideline has already stopped his route basically at times. And your guys in the middle better not try to squat on routes in cover-four if there’s somebody streaking down the middle.
This is easily the best scrambler of this class, in terms of extending plays by making people miss and having slip off himself, before launching the ball down the field. When forced to do so, nobody can play backyard football quite like this guy. He’s constantly able to get around the corner, even if it seems like the edge rusher is attacking upfield and it seems like the contain is protected.
The same is true on rollouts, when he can quickly pick up five yards if nobody is open. However, he can also dart toward a lane and then, as that crease closes down, stop on a dime and re-accelerate through a different escape path. And it’s not just seeing somebody run open and firing a bullet, but he absolutely has some beautiful high-arching throws to receivers turning up the sideline and hitting them perfectly in stride.
Two throws like that come to mind right away in the Middle Tennessee State and Syracuse games. They just made your jaw drop. However, Willis was also heavily integrated in the Flames’ rushing attack, with a bunch of zone read/invert veer plays. He displays good timing on QB draw and delayed take-off for power-like concepts, where it always looks like an unblocked man might get him, but they basically never do.
Once he gets past the line of scrimmage, he is such a dynamic runner in space, with his speed and change-of-direction skills, but what really stands out about him is how strong his lower half is. This past season, he broke more tackles (89) than any FBS player on the ground, including running backs.
You actually see linebackers bounce off his quads. Willis shows an innate feel for setting up blockers in space, being able to lead them to the outside and slicing underneath or hitting an extra gear and working around, if opponents try to cheat inside.
He features deceptive body-language to incorporate nods and get tacklers to freeze momentarily. You see it at times on some bootlegs when the unblocked edge defender is charging at him and the Liberty QB slips underneath that guy.
Malik Willis' weaknesses
From a throwing mechanics perspective, there is a lot to like about Willis’ release, but he has to open that front-foot a little more to be able to rotate through properly and not hinder himself. More importantly, looking at Liberty’s offensive scheme, there was an absurd amount of stop routes and double-moves off that, along with a lot of stick concepts, with a fade and out from the slot, hitting those hole shots in front of the safety.
It was very elementary passing concepts altogether, where he wasn’t asked to read between the hashes. He barely ever hits receivers out of their breaks, and there were some opportunities, where based on the leverage and movement of defenders you could see that one of his receivers was able to get open, but instead of releasing it early as the rush was coming in, he’d rather find an escape path.
Willis pre-determines throws and has to show better eye-discipline, which led to some ugly picks. Routinely, you see him stare down routes down the sideline, allowing the safety in cover-two to make plays on the ball. And he’s often a beat or two late, which his arm won’t be able to bail him out of as frequently in the pros.
Willis was tied for a nation-leading ten fumbles in 2020. He just tried to be Houdini a little bit too much and exposed the ball to swiping hands of defenders. He held onto the ball longer than any other quarterback in the FBS last season (3.33 seconds), so he needs to do a better job of feeling pressure off the edge and speeding up his mental clock in general, to not give up as much big yardage on sacks.
He also needs to wrap the ball up more securely if the hit is imminent. He could certainly still work on keeping himself alive as a thrower for a longer period of time when he scrambles outside, by continuing to flow toward the sideline, rather than aiming north. And as strong as he may be, he can’t engage into contact willingness at this rate if he wants to have an extended NFL career.
Conclusion on Malik Willis
Willis developed some bad “hero-ball” tendencies at Liberty. It will be important for him to eliminate some of those and allow his future NFL team to carry him to some degree early on until his game (mentally) has caught up to his physical talent and he’s ready to carry the guys around him when needed.
He’s had some rough moments versus Power-Five competition, and he’ll have to dig deeper in offensive play-designs and progressions at the next level. However, he has, at least, one of the two best arms. He’s the best scrambler and runner, and he’s already shown real strides in just two years as a starter, and it’s not like he can’t handle more from the shoulders up – he just wasn’t asked to.
Willis isn’t as breath-taking when he takes off and has the speed to outrun safeties like a Lamar Jackson, but he’s so much bigger and stronger. It may not have been the cleanest throwing session, but to watch how effortlessly Willis launched the ball down the field and just the positive vibe he brought to the table, interacting with the guys and just having fun at the Liberty pro day, one can't help but love the guy.
With his natural talent, he may get on the field later in his rookie season and collect those valuable reps, but it’s in his best interest to have his failures on a practice field as he learns his future team’s offense. There’s a long way to go, but he has the upside of a top-five QB in the league.
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