The last time Bears quarterback Caleb Williams touched the football during a game, he made the best play of his Bears career, rifling a 46-yard touchdown pass to DJ Moore in a stiff wind for a walk-off winner.
Pro Football Focus graded it as the most perfect pass thrown all season. It meant even more than any analytics web site could possibly compute — Williams beat the rival Packers and gave fans reason to think that anything was possible as the Bears hurtle toward the most critical part of a surprise season.
So what will Williams do for an encore?
His answer on “Sunday Night Football” — against the 49ers, perhaps the most well-rounded team they’ve faced all year — will go a long way to how high the Bears’ ceiling can be in the NFC playoffs.
“My goal isn’t to just get to the playoffs,” Williams said. “My goal is to win and win big. And so, I’m going to keep my head down. I’m going to keep growing for the guys in this building, for the coaches and things like that, for this organization. And for the city — to be able to be proud and happy, to be fans and supporters of the Chicago Bears.”
Over the last two games — a win against the lowly Browns and the rally against the rival Packers — Williams has posted a 105 passer rating with four touchdowns and no interceptions. Those are the numbers he needs to put up if the 11-4 Bears are going to compete in the postseason.
Williams has six fourth-quarter comebacks this season, the most in Bears history. If he can start as fast as he finishes, though, the Bears won’t have to rely on his late heroics. The Bears went 70 yards in their first drive against the Packers before turning the ball over on downs. Williams managed only three first downs during the rest of a scoreless first half.
“It’s really just us,” Williams said. “Realizing that it isn’t necessarily the other team that’s actually stopping us. The mindset just changes. A play happens and the spark becomes a fire — and we’re ignited at that point.”
Whether the fire can spread over the course of eight days is another question. Coach Ben Johnson believes in momentum, but only during the course of the game.
“It’s a little bit more difficult there over the course of the season,” he said. “Each game’s its own story.”
Williams’ walk-off winner, though, is bound to have some positive effect on his next game. He said Saturday night that yet another late win made him wonder whether the Bears were becoming a team of destiny. Still, Williams’ conviction doesn’t change from throw-to-throw — even when it’s the biggest one of his NFL career to this point.
“I don’t think he lacks for confidence to start with, [so] I don’t necessarily think that’s a confidence-builder,” Johnson said. “I do think the best thing about that was it looked exactly like that in practice, and we’ve had a few plays like that over the course of the season where what we did in practice has transitioned almost identical to the game. That’s a credit to our coaching staff putting in the plays and seeing it through and the players kind of bringing it to life like that.”
Williams and quarterbacks coach J.T. Barrett have drilled the plays in practice — and the mindset Williams needs to have on game days.
“It’s something that we spend time and talk about,” offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said. “In a big moment with the brightest lights, to be able to go execute and do that, it was awesome to be able to go see that. But that’s something that we’re going to expect from him on a regular basis just because that’s what he’s capable of.”
One of the most exciting parts of this -season is Williams and Johnson starting to see plays from the same lens, both in -practice and in games. The coach smiled Friday when asked about Williams’ belief that he wasn’t sure if he liked the quarterback early during their partnership.
Many of Johnson’s friends, the coach joked, could say the same thing — he and Cardinals offensive coordinator Drew -Petzing, who was in Johnson’s wedding, didn’t really speak to each other the first two months they coached at Boston College together.
“That’s just kind of how it is sometimes,” he said.
They’ve spent the week trying to figure out a 49ers defense that’s more dangerous when the Bears have the ball in their hands than when it’s in the air. Only two teams have more fumble recoveries than their 10, but only the Jets have fewer interceptions than their six.
The 49ers have given up only 63 points over their last four games. One-third of those came in the fourth quarter of each of their last two games — in which the 49ers beat the Colts by 21 and the Titans by 13.
Williams’ challenge, then, goes just -beyond trying to replicate his game-winner from a week ago. It’s trying to repeat what he has shown his coaches in practice against a defense that doesn’t yield.
“It’s pretty cool when that happens,” Johnson said. “Hopefully we have a little bit more of that go on this week.”