The Bears spent their entire offseason looking for ways to help Caleb Williams emerge from an inconsistent rookie season and take substantive steps toward being a franchise quarterback.
Every move, from hiring coach Ben Johnson to revamping the offensive line and using the No. 10 draft pick on pass-catching tight end Colston Loveland, was geared toward that goal.
And then Williams opened the season Monday against the Vikings with an unsettling game full of red flags. The most troubling issue was inaccurate passing, an ongoing and — to him — mystifying problem, and little looked smooth after his 10-of-10 start spiraled into a performance that looked a lot like some of his more frustrating ones last season.
Williams said Wednesday night he needs to “keep trusting and believing” in coach Ben Johnson and his teammates and have faith that he’ll continue developing. But Justin Fields and Mitch Trubisky said that, too. On-field results are the only thing that prevents patience from wearing thin.
It was as tough for Williams to watch film of him completing 21 of 35 passes for 210 yards with a touchdown for an 88.6 passer rating in the 27-24 loss to the Vikings as it was for everyone else.
Caleb Williams with a BRUTAL miss.
How was he so short??pic.twitter.com/uQkfvHtzTU
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) November 10, 2024
The inaccuracy was brutal. He was well below Johnson’s target of completing 70% of his passes, and ESPN Analytics charted him as the least accurate passer in the NFL in Week 1 with 29.4% of his throws graded as off target. NFL Next Gen Stats had Williams a league-worst 13.2 points below expected completion percentage.
Many of the plays would’ve been difference makers on a night when the Bears went into the final minutes with just 10 offensive points in 10 possessions.
He threw the ball over wide open receiver Olamide Zaccheaus 25 yards up the right sideline and out of bounds. He was too far in front of tight end Cole Kmet and receiver DJ Moore on intermediate routes across the middle. He sailed a would-be touchdown pass up the left sideline over Moore after he beat a cornerback and safety.
As Williams watched his misses, he repeatedly saw everything go right for the Bears until the ball left his hand: Good play calls, good routes, bad passes.
“That’s something that we practice and something that I’m going to keep getting after, keep correcting,” Williams said. “You miss and you move on. You correct and you find ways to get better.”
The Bears can’t win unless he fixes this.
It was a problem last season, too, as Williams finished 33rd in the league with a 62.5 completion percentage. He trailed fellow rookies Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye and Bo Nix.
It was a steep drop from completing 68.6% of his passes in his final season at USC, but this isn’t the Pac-12. Some of the acrobatic throws that made Williams a college star don’t work in the NFL because the talent gap is minimal. Even the worst-rated pro cornerbacks can close on a pass that comes out too late, and defensive pressure makes it tough to take extra time to reset.
Johnson has continuously harped on Williams’ footwork, which is something former coach Matt Eberflus mentioned once as well. Johnson told Williams all offseason, “If you’re not aligned properly from the ground up, then you’re going to have inconsistencies with your target.”
That made the film tough for Johnson to watch, too, because the message he’s been hammering for months hasn’t fully landed.
“When he was doing it properly, the ball came out on time and he was delivering accurate footballs,” Johnson said Wednesday. “But it’s still not 100%, all the time, and that’s something that we’re working through.”
The work will continue Sunday in an incredibly hostile environment. Not only do the Lions and defensive end Aidan Hutchinson present a challenging pass rush, but Ford Field will be electric as they look to beat Johnson and put their season-opening loss to the Packers behind them.
The sheer volume in the building is one more obstacle Williams must manage as he tries to get on track. The Bears had four false starts at home against the Vikings and had to burn a timeout in the first half to avoid a delay-of-game penalty.
Williams said the false starts were his fault because he needed to be louder and clearer in making sure everyone was on the same page.
But now, an offense and quarterback that have had trouble with pre-snap procedures heads into a stadium that has recorded a max noise level of 134.4 decibels. The Bears will almost certainly have to pivot to a silent cadence, and it’s hard to be confident in that going well based on how things have gone.
“It’s something you need to use in those loud environments, and we’ll use it effectively,” Williams said.
It’s great that he’s upbeat, but the list of necessary corrections is longer than it should be. The Bears, starting with Williams, need to sharpen just about every facet of their offense if they’re going to compete with a championship contender Sunday.
