This is the kind of history you want to make.
If you would have told Green Bay Packers fans a few weeks ago that newly acquired quarterback Malik Willis was going to make NFL history in just his first three weeks of the team, everyone would have probably assumed that it was going to be the wrong side of history.
Fortunately for the Packers, their fans, and Willis himself, the young quarterback has been on the right side of history after just two starts with the team.
On top of it all, Willis was able to make NFL history against the team that dumped him (the Tennessee Titans) on his old home field in Week 3.
Malik Willis makes NFL history early with the Packers in Week 3
Only 27 days after the Titans traded Willis, he got revenge by throwing and rushing for a touchdown against them. According to NFL senior researcher Tony Holzman-Escareno, that’s the shortest duration for a player to achieve that against their former team in league history.
Malik Willis threw and ran for a TD against his former team (Titans) just 27 days after being traded by them, the shortest duration for a player to do so all-time.
Previously, Red Dunn of the Chicago Cardinals threw and ran for a TD against the Milwaukee Badgers in October 1925…
— Tony Holzman-Escareno (@FrontOfficeNFL) September 23, 2024
Forget just being a cool statistic, Willis just pulled off something that hasn’t been done in literally almost 100 years. This is an outrageously cool achievement, and Sunday’s matchup between the Packers and Titans was more than just a revenge game for Willis.
The former third-round pick out of Liberty had obviously been written off by the Titans, which makes very little sense considering what we’ve seen in the early goings of this season from Will Levis, who threw two interceptions (including a pick-six) and was sacked a whopping eight times by the Packers’ talented defensive front.
The situation Willis finds himself in with the Packers is proof that situation and coaching matter as much as anything in the NFL.
Over the course of his two starts with the Packers, Willis has completed over 73 percent of his throws for 324 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He’s got 114 rushing yards and a rushing touchdown on top of it all. It’s just impressive no matter what way you slice it, and the Packers have won each of Willis’s two starts.
Granted, they were going up against the Indianapolis Colts and Titans, who have looked like two of the worst teams in the league in the early stages of this season, but that really doesn’t matter. Nobody expected anything out of Willis and, in fact, in many cases it was expected that he would actually look pretty bad and/or lost out there playing in a new offense.
But the Packers have protected Willis, and he has made plays within the confines of the offense. They have highlighted his strengths to the point that he now has a really cool piece of NFL history to hang his hat on. Effectively, nobody else has ever done what he just did against his former team, at least not in such a short amount of time. Not in any of our lifetimes, anyway.
And we may never see anything like that happen again.