There’s a striking divergence between the way the football world seems to be celebrating Bears quarterback Caleb Williams as though he already has arrived and coach Ben Johnson’s hard-driving approach to a player who still has plenty to learn.
The louder the hype gets around Williams, the more of a test it’ll be of his character: He pleaded for relentless coaching coming off a maddening rookie season, but will he still receive it when everyone outside Halas Hall is calling him a star?
It’s been building to this point all offseason coming off a season in which Williams was up and down but delivered epic highlights and jaw-dropping comebacks, and it peaked over the past month.
The NFL put the Bears in seven standalone games when the schedule came out last month. Williams climbed into the top 10 in MVP odds, and NBC’s Chris Simms ranked him the No. 6 quarterback in the league, ahead of Justin Herbert, Drake Maye and Jared Goff. Expectations are snowballing for the Iceman.
Then EA Sports chose Williams as its cover star for the upcoming Madden video game Wednesday. That’s a stunning honor for this generation, and some of the recent selections include MVPs Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady.
Johnson was asked about it and replied flatly, “I saw it this morning, yeah. No reaction.”
He then divulged that he’d just gone over some clips from the previous day’s practice with the offense and conveyed that “there’s some things, in my opinion he can get better at.”
Johnson’s opinion matters more than any expert on TV or video game. Popularity is just fluff. So far, though, he hasn’t seen in any change in Williams’ willingness to accept constructive criticism.
“He’s wired the right way,” Johnson said. “He wants to be great. When that’s the case, you can coach him hard.
“We’re seeing the game through the same lens, which is critical for a play-caller and a quarterback to be able to do. I’m really, really proud about how he’s gone about this offseason.”
That’s reassuring, and it points to the reality that this will be a test for Johnson, too, in just his second season as a head coach. He must continue to find the right blend of encouraging and acknowledging Williams’ progress while still being a tough grader.
Quarterbacks coach J.T. Barrett, who has worked under Johnson since 2022, illustrated that perfectly in a recent conversation about Williams in which he praised some of his “ridiculous” late-game heroics, but drove home the point to Williams that those wouldn’t be required if he’d be sharper throughout the game.
“You [wouldn’t] necessarily have to put the cape on and make those crazy plays [if] you already were killing them in the first three quarters,” Barrett said.
Johnson would never want to scrub some of the off-platform, sidewinding, artistic plays that perhaps only Williams can make. This is an athlete who, with the game on the line in the playoffs against the Packers, leaped and threw 35 air yards for a bullseye to Rome Odunze on fourth-and-eight.
But Johnson’s offense doesn’t work very well when the quarterback finishes last in the NFL in completion percentage at 58.1 and 22nd in passer rating at 90.1.
Johnson’s play designs are too clockwork, too sophisticated to be wasted by inefficiency, and he identified 80-100 incomplete passes from last season that Williams could’ve connected on with better timing, quicker reads and more accurate throws.
When Williams spoke to reporters at the start of the offseason training program in April, presumably after Johnson had shown him those plays, he agreed that he needs to “keep harping” on details in the passing game, delivering accurate, catchable passes that lead his receivers into open space and being more efficient overall.
It’s a good sign that he’s saying the same things Johnson says, as he often did toward the end of last season.
That led to a significant step forward.
Williams was seventh in the NFL with 3,942 yards passing (a franchise record) and sixth with 27 touchdown passes last season. He threw just seven interceptions. He led the NFL with six game-winning drives in the regular season and added one in the Bears’ first playoff win since the 2010 season.
All of that bodes well for his and the team’s future, but as general manager Ryan Poles said when discussing Williams’ eligibility for a contract extension after this season, “Anyone that’s watched the league long enough knows that for quarterback play, it’s consistency… We still have steps to go. I don’t want to make it like he’s already [there]. He knows he’s got work to do.”
In early December, when the Bears were on a five-game winning streak but Williams had an 85.6 passer rating during that stretch, Johnson pointed out that they were “winning in spite of our passing game, not because of it.” That said, Williams won two of those games with great plays at the end.
Johnson needs Williams to be an artist and a technician. It has to be both.
And Williams needs Johnson to be his most vocal supporter and harshest critic. It has to be both.
Those tensions will challenge them this season, and how they navigate them will reveal a lot about them individually and as a duo that the Bears hope will be the heartbeat of their future.