With three tight ends crouched at the line of scrimmage and a running back behind him, Bears quarterback Caleb Williams took a first-down snap in the second quarter Sunday and faked a handoff to Kyle Monangai to his right.
With a clean pocket, Williams drifted back and to his right, planted his right heel into the Soldier Field turf and rifled a post pass to an open Luther Burden, who was split left.
The ball flew a foot-and-a-half over his head. Burden leapt, and the ball went between his hands and fell to the ground.
“I would like to see [Williams’ throw] brought down a little bit,” coach Ben Johnson said Monday.
The throw was one of a few that left Williams bewildered following Sunday’s 31-28 win against the Steelers. It’s why the quarterback wasn’t satisfied despite a stat line that, given the context of the franchise, qualifies as excellent. From 2000-2024, the Bears scored at least 31 points and threw three touchdowns in a win only 22 times. They’ve done it three times in the last eight games.
“It’s nice when you get to learn from wins,” Williams said. “And you find ways, when you have mess-ups or all these different things, to find ways to win. But also understand that we have so much left in the tank and we can be so much better.”
The quarterback’s struggles with deep shots are well-documented — the Bears wanted at least two back the week before against the Vikings — but Williams at times inaccurate throwing over the middle Sunday. That usually doesn’t happen.
The most egregious throw came when, with 30 seconds left in the half, Williams threw toward a wide-open Rome Odunze, who ran an in-breaking route, moving right to left. The throw was so high that it didn’t touch Odunze and instead hit the hands of Steelers safety Kyle Dugger behind him.
He dropped it. The Bears wound up kicking a field goal, which wound up being the difference in the game.
“In the beginning, it didn’t feel like I got into a good rhythm,” Williams said. “I was missing passes, and it was kind of weird. … [I] just was missing, like I said, on passes and routes that I’ve been hitting the past couple weeks and been pretty good with.”
While Williams’ 104.3 passer rating was his third-best of the season, his adjusted completion percentage of 66.7% — Pro Football Focus’ way of measuring what throws were on target — was his third-worst of the year.
Williams’ footwork, which has been the culprit for his errant throws often this season, seemed to be relatively clean. Johnson tried to find ways to get him back on track. Some quarterbacks can be put back into a rhythm by making a few easy throws in a row. Williams isn’t one of those, Johnson said.
“I do think he settled down once we got through a few of those missed ones, and he ended up making some big ones for us as well,” he said. “Something we’ll continue to work through.”
The Bears’ game plan called for Williams to throw in the middle of the field. Only three passes, all incompletions, went as wide as the right sideline. He didn’t try to throw outside the numbers on the left side.
The Bears’ pass-blocking helped Williams — the Steelers hit Williams exactly once all game, which was on T.J. Watt’s strip sack that gave the Steelers a touchdown.
“You have to give those guys credit — they had some time on inside breaking routes,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said. “The quarterback was highly accurate on play pass, turning his back to the defense and coming up and throwing. And sometimes you’ve got to give credit to the opponent.”
Johnson said Williams has “improved dramatically” throwing in the middle of the field since his arrival.
“I think he’s getting more comfortable there,” Johnson said. “He hit a few — and then there were a couple … that felt like if we bring it down just a little bit, that we could have a couple more explosives there in that game.”
Williams has always been accurate throwing up the seam against two high safeties, Johnson said. He’s grown more comfortable throwing off play-action, particularly after taking the ball from under center. Before this season, Williams had spent his pro and college career mostly in the shotgun.
“Now, when you’re talking about the daggers or the drift routes that we have in, I think he’s done a nice job of trusting the fact that he can turn his back to the defense and yet still flip around make a decision whether to pull the trigger or not,” Johnson said.
When it goes well, Johnson can feel Williams’ confidence grow.
“Some guys get a little bit nervous and get a little bit afraid to do that,” Johnson said. “He’s not that type.”
When Williams wrote in his notebook last week, he reminded himself to stay positive, knowing that he’d struggled with his own frustration the past few weeks.
“I think I did a solid job with that this week,” he said.
Now he needs to be more accurate.
“We’ll go back and watch,” Williams said, “and figure out why.”
