The plays were spectacular. Each was an instant viral video as Bears quarterback Caleb Williams made world-class athletes look clumsy trying to tackle him. Then he’d launch a seemingly impossible pass right on target to his receiver.
It was thrilling. And also, in the eyes of his coaches, a bit much.
One of their main messages to Williams this offseason, as quarterbacks coach J.T. Barrett put it recently, is simply, “Do less.” There are times the Bears need Williams to be that one-of-one gunslinger, especially when they’re desperate late in games, but they’d like to see a lot more of the simple throws that the NFL’s best rely on to build 300-yard passing performances.
“We don’t have to work as hard for our money,” Barrett explained. “There’s times where we could just work through our progression and get the ball out on time instead of having to create and extend plays.”
As a window into his conversations with Williams after some of his ridiculous scramble plays, Barrett recalled, “Hey, my guy, I know you just made this crazy play. That was really cool. But we had a guy come open wide underneath that you just pop it to and then he does the running, and now you’re not as tired.”
When it comes to Williams, Barrett’s voice matters more than most. He has worked under coach Ben Johnson since 2022, when both were with the Lions and brought the best out of five-time Pro Bowl quarterback Jared Goff, and runs the day-to-day of Williams’ development.
Johnson ultimately is in charge of Williams’ progress and works directly with him in addition to his myriad other responsibilities as head coach, but Barrett is his deputy. That’s why the coaching staff shuffle this offseason, mainly Press Taylor replacing Declan Doyle as offensive coordinator, is mostly inconsequential to Williams.
The Bears aren’t trying to turn Williams into Goff. The clockwork precision and timing of Goff’s game, though, reflects Johnson and Barrett’s deeply rooted belief of what efficient, winning quarterback play should be. They want more of that in Williams’ game as he grows.
That starts with completion percentage and Johnson’s insistence that Williams is at 70%. Not only did he fail to reach that number in any single game last season, but he finished last in the league at 58.1% overall. That sunk his yards per pass to 6.9 and his passer rating to 90.1, whereas Goff completed 68%, averaged 7.9 yards per pass and registered a 105.5 passer rating.
Goff isn’t athletic enough to do what Williams does, but the point is that he usually doesn’t need to.
“Late in some of those games, we were making some heroic plays… but it wasn’t necessary if we execute in the first quarter and second quarter,” Barrett said. “We might be up two touchdowns by the time we get to the fourth quarter.
“We can be efficient and take what the defense is giving… You don’t necessarily have to put the cape on and make those crazy plays because you already were killing them in the first three quarters.”
Boring can be beautiful.
Barrett saw the art of the dink-and-dunk up close while working behind Saints Hall of Famer Drew Brees as a practice-squad quarterback in 2018 and ’19. Brees’ arm barely had anything left at that point, but he completed 74.4% of his passes, averaged 268.1 yards per game and posted a 115.9 passer rating. He averaged just 6.7 air yards per throw in 2019.
“I don’t think it’s a hard sell, especially when you watch the elite players in our league do it for such a long time,” Barrett said, citing Brees, Tom Brady and reigning MVP Matthew Stafford. “It’s like poetry… These are the best people that play our game and this is how they operate. This is the way it looks.
“There’s Tom Brady doing it. You better than Tom?”
Williams wants to be. He’s talked about it since before the Bears drafted him. Mastering the basics would be a good step, because Brady always knew where the easy completions were.
Williams said last month that his 2025 season was “a stepping stone, but not the last stepping stone,” and added that, even with the improvement, “That’s not where I want to be.” He sees exactly what his coaches see: Progress, but not enough of it.
Barrett made a passing reference to Williams possibly picking up bad habits as a rookie under former coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, and after Johnson declared last summer that Williams could throw virtually everything he “learned” that season out the window, the staff coached him like a rookie last season.
Johnson and Barrett were on him, especially about fundamentals and recognizing obvious completions underneath, constantly. Early on, Williams was getting so much wrong and Johnson was so rigid in enforcing his standards that Williams believed the coach didn’t like him. That wasn’t the case, of course. There was just a lot to fix.
That certainly won’t change this season — or ever, knowing Johnson — but the Bears expect Williams to be ready to step into his own.
He should be catching his own errors in real time. He should be running the huddle with authority and directing action at the line of scrimmage with ease. He should be running Johnson’s plays like a technician.
If he can do all of that, plus have the rare ability to make what Barrett calls “freaky” throws when the moment demands it, the Bears will know they have their guy.