Bears quarterback Caleb Williams started Monday night’s game perfect.
He didn’t stay that way. Far from it.
After becoming the first Bears quarterback since at least 1978 to start the season by completing his first 10 passes, Williams struggled against the division rival Vikings in a 27-24 season-opening loss at Soldier Field.
The Bears managed just 17 points on offense, with 10 coming in the first half and the final seven when they were down 10 with about two minutes to play in the game. The rest came when cornerback Nahshon Wright picked off Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy in the third quarter and ran up the right sideline for a 74-yard touchdown.
A Bears defense that started off stout couldn’t hang on in the fourth quarter, giving up three touchdowns to the La Grange Park native — passes from McCarthy to receiver Justin Jefferson and running back Aaron Jones and then a 14-yard quarterback run with 2:53 to play that put the Vikings ahead by 10.
“We felt like we were dominating the game …” Williams said. “We were in control, up … two scores … That mentality that is something that we have, something that we preach. We didn’t have that today.”
Williams finished 21-for-35 for 211 yards and a pedestrian 86.7 passer rating. From the end of his 10-pass streak until the end of the game, though, he was just 11-for-25 for 115 yards.
McCarthy went 13-for-20 for 143 yards, two touchdowns and a 98.5 passer rating.
That Williams’ loss came to the Vikings is oddly poetic in itself. The Bears quarterback wanted to be drafted by the Bears’ division rival last year. He and his father even workshopped ways to force his way to Minnesota and away from Halas Hall before deciding he’d play for the Bears.
McCarthy, meanwhile, grew up a Bears fan. He attended his first game at Soldier Field at age 4, watching the Vikings beat his hometown team on a field goal at the buzzer. Monday night’s game wasn’t that close.
Williams’ first incompletion of the game came at the worst time — the Bears went for it on fourth-and-three from the Vikings’ 24 in the second quarter, and Williams missed a wide-open DJ Moore on a slant pass. He later missed a similar pass to tight end Cole Kmet.
“It’s something you practice throughout the whole week,” he said. “It’s something I’ll be better with.”
Williams wasn’t sacked for the first time until the fourth quarter, but he was left to scramble and weave his way through the pocket the entire game. His rushing touchdown came as a result — on third down during the Bears’ first drive of the game, he scrambled toward the front left pylon for a nine-yard score, reaching into the end zone while he was popped in the shoulder by cornerback Jeff Okudah.
Williams ran 20.29 mph on his touchdown run, the fastest speed he has posted as an NFL player. The play had a 17.8% probability of scoring when he started running, per the site.
Here’s a more important stat: it was the first opening-drive touchdown of Williams’ career. Last year, he managed just two field goals.
The Bears’ offense wouldn’t score again until, with his team down 10 with 2:02 to play, Williams threw a one-yard touchdown pass to Rome Odunze.
The Vikings had all the momentum in the fourth quarter.
“I think you certainly feel it when you’re on the sideline there.” coach Ben Johnson said. “You got it moving, got it going, then all of a sudden it starts going backwards. Negative plays are happening, whether it’s penalties or the intentional grounding, things of that nature. Yeah, I mean, it cost us some points, big-time.”
Williams and the Bears’ offense made many of the same mistakes that concerned Johnson during training camp. The Bears had four false starts in the first half alone, three by offensive linemen. In the first quarter, Williams had to rush to take a timeout to avoid a delay of game.
“We’re hurting ourselves more often than anything …” Kmet said. “We just need to negate those negatives.”
Late in the third quarter, Williams was flagged for intentional grounding when he flung the ball forward — but not far enough for it to pass the line of scrimmage. The result was third-and-30. What started off as a first down at the Vikings’ 24 ended with Cairo Santos missing a 50-yard field goal that would have given the Bears a 14-point lead.
“The lesson there is to get the ball past the line of scrimmage …” Williams said. “I knew we were in field goal range.”
Later in the fourth quarter, Williams went to throw the ball away and stepped out of bounds instead for a four-yard loss. The Vikings were credited with their second and final sack of the game,
McCarthy, a first-round pick out of Michigan last year, made his first NFL start after missing all last season with a knee injury suffered during a preseason game. He looked the part of a first-time quarterback in the first half, going 5-for-8 for 58 yards. In the second half, he went 8-for-12 for 85 yards and two touchdowns.
Johnson has preached for months that the Bears aren’t a finished product, offensively, and probably won’t be for months. The former Lions play-caller has said it took years for his former offense to become what he hoped it could be.
In that sense, Williams still has room to grow — and time to do it. But the pressure is on. The Bears are allowed to give their quarterback a contract extension at the end of his third season. They need to know by then whether he’s their long-promised quarterback of the future, or if he’s another Justin Fields or Mitch Trubisky.
The Bears doubled Matt Eberflus’ salary to land Johnson with hopes that he could turn Williams into a star. That dynamic will be fascinating to watch as Williams continues through their first season together. It figures to look a lot like Monday night’s debut — with flashes of greatness and ample mistakes. The Bears’ only hope is that Williams continues to get better. They’ve lived through what happens when a quarterback doesn’t.
“This is the start, but definitely not the end,” Williams said.
