Bears QB Caleb Williams shows more signs of growth in blowout win over Panthers

Wide receiver DJ Moore had to check the calendar.

“What’s this, Week 5?” he said Sunday after the Bears’ 36-10 thrashing of the popgun Panthers. “It took five weeks to get the down-the-field pass game going.

“When it hits, it hits.”

Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams found a wide-open Moore for a 34-yard catch-and-run score, the first touchdown the Bears scored in the first quarter all year. Then he threw a 30-yard pass to a diving Moore in the end zone with 24 seconds left in the first half.

Williams finished with a stat line — 20-for-29 for 304 yards, two touchdowns and a 126.2 passer rating — that matched the eye test. He had played the best game of his young career.

Of all the things to like about this rout — it was the Bears’ biggest margin of victory since the next-to-last game of the 2021 season — nothing tops what Williams accomplished when he threw deep.

Entering the game, Williams was 3-for-22 for 118 yards with three interceptions on passes that traveled 20 yards or more in the air. Pro Football Focus gave him the lowest grade on deep balls among all NFL starting quarterbacks.

Against Carolina, he went 3-for-4 for 89 yards and two touchdowns.

“It keeps us on the football field, being efficient,” Williams said. “And then you have those big plays, the momentum swings. . . . Us playing together and playing like that, you’re going to win a lot of games.”

Beating the one-win Panthers is no remarkable feat, whether on short passes or bombs. What was impressive was Williams’ ability to, for a second consecutive week, improve an aspect of his development that his coaches had called for during the week.

Before the Rams game, Bears coaches wanted him to eliminate negative plays. He proceeded to go 15-for-15 on passes 10 yards or shorter.

In the lead-up to this game, they wanted him to threaten the defense beyond 10 yards. He did, despite a stiff wind, using a no-huddle offense to test the Panthers’ backup linebackers and playing off a rushing attack that was steady once again.

The result: an offense that had nine plays go for 20 yards or longer in the first four weeks had six against the Panthers.

Williams had his second game of 300 or more passing yards. Justin Fields, the last quarterback the Bears picked in Round 1, had one in his Bears career.

In the first half, Williams went 11-for-15 for 200 yards, two touchdown and a 154.9 passer rating. It was remarkable progress even for a fan base that has seen false positives in the past. When Mitch Trubisky threw for five touchdowns and a 158.3 passer rating against the Buccaneers in the first half in 2018, it was his 16th career start. When Fields had three touchdown passes and a 158.3 passer rating in the first game against the Broncos last year, he was making his 29th career start.

Williams was on start No. 5.

As rookies, Fields and Trubisky surpassed 1,000 passing yards in their seventh starts. Williams did it in his fifth.

“He’s just a really good, quick learner,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “It’s not easy, especially at this level. I just think it shows his willingness to get better every week. Obviously, he has the talent to be one of the best in the league, but he’s done a good job of being patient with himself in a certain regard, but also having that fire in him where he knows he needs to get better at certain things. . . .

“His command of the offense has just grown every week, even a lot faster than I anticipated.”

Coach Matt Eberflus said Williams has responded well to every challenge the coaching staff has laid out for him — from learning the offense to improving before training camp to fixing mistakes after each game.

“He’s learning and growing,” Eberflus said. “You can see that in the course of these games that we’ve had. He needs it to continue. He knows that. You just have to level up, keep leveling up.”

He did against the Panthers, the way he did the week before. For a second straight game, Williams didn’t turn the ball over.
over.

Combine that with another standout performance by the defense — which held Panthers quarterback Andy Dalton to 18-for-28 passing for 136 yards with one interception for a 61.0 passer rating and sacked him three times — and the Bears have a formula they can build around.

“With the defense that we have, not forcing things,’’ Kmet said. “I’m sure [Williams] will look at some things on the tape and wish he’d tried some throws he didn’t try. . . .

“He has really good awareness as to where the team’s at, not just forcing things just to force them. It’s important to keep those turnovers low, and if he can have zero turnovers, I think we’ll be on the winning side of most of the games.”

Just imagine what they can do if Williams keeps improving at this pace.

“We’re going to have some hiccups and some ups and downs,” Moore said. “There were a lot of ups [against Carolina].”