Caleb Williams will walk into Lambeau Field on Sunday being able to say something that few other Bears quarterbacks have: I’ve won here before.
Yes, it was with an interim head coach in Week 18 last year. Of course, it was with eight starters who aren’t even on the Bears any more. And the win came only after the Packers lost quarterback Jordan Love and receiver Christian Watson to injury.
It mattered then, though. It matters still.
“Being able to be a part of that, being able to contribute to that, provides confidence for myself,” Williams said after Tuesday’s practice. “I’m going to exude that to the other guys.”
Williams had many college rivals — Oklahoma hated Texas and Oklahoma State, while USC despised UCLA and Notre Dame. Williams said those matchups were all ultimately the same — “an emotional game [that] always comes down to the final minutes.” That’s what happened last year, when he drove 47 yards in 48 seconds to set up a field goal to snap the Bears’ 10-game losing streak and give them their first win against the Packers in 12 tries.
“It was awesome,” he said.
He ended a season that he described as “such a tough time and a weird time” on a thrilling note. Williams’ 95.2 passer rating there last year was the second-best by a Bears starting quarterback at Lambeau Field since 2008, trailing a 2023 Justin Fields performance in which he threw the ball just 16 times.
“Being able to go out there and defeat them and things like that, it was important for us as players and the guys that are still here,” Williams said. “And for the future, we want to keep that going, obviously.”
It’s rare chance for a young Bears quarterback. Cade McNown was the last Bears starting quarterback to win at Lambeau Field in his first two years in the NFL, though he was replaced by Jim Miller after spraining his knee in the first quarter of his first game there in 1999.
Since they traded for Jay Cutler in 2009, the Bears have won at Lambeau Field only three times — and only once when the Packers’ starting quarterback finished the game. That came in an otherwise forgettable 2015 season, when Cutler beat Aaron Rodgers on Thanksgiving night when the Packers retired Brett Favre’s jersey at halftime.
Josh McCown beat the Packers in 2013 when Shea McClellin broke Rodgers’ collarbone in the first quarter. And Williams defeated them in January when Love left the game in the second.
“Got the monkey off our backs [after] not winning up there for a while,” safety Kevin Byard said. “This is a whole new year. Different cast, as far as our team.”
Having Williams is reason for optimism, even as the 9-3 Bears work toward improving their pass game.
Bears coach Ben Johnson didn’t put too much stake in Williams’ Lambeau Field history — “To me each week is its own story,” he said — but went out of his way to praise his quarterback. On Monday, he said the Bears were “winning in spite of our passing game, not because of it.” Tuesday, he said that he didn’t want that comment to be construed as dissatisfaction with Williams, saying he “couldn’t be more pleased with how he played” in blustery conditions against the Eagles.
“I know what the stats say,” Johnson said. “Throw those out of the window. He’s doing a really good job managing the ballgame.”
Williams concurred.
“Yeah, take the stats out,” he said. “You go watch some ball and you’ll be able to really see.”
Previous Bears quarterbacks have had even uglier stats at Lambeau Field. Neither Fields nor Mitch Trubisky ever won there. In the 16 games they’ve played at Lambeau Field since the start of the Cutler era in 2009, Bears’ starting quarterbacks have:
• Thrown 15 touchdowns — less than one per game — and 23 interceptions.
• Thrown more than one touchdown in a game only three times.
• Posted a passer rating against the Packers that was better than the league-wide average for that season just four times.
• Lost 13 of 16 games, scoring 10 points or fewer five times, and have been outscored by 150 points.
“Everybody knows the stats of the Bears going up there before last year, “Williams said. “It wasn’t the best.”
He has a chance to make it better.
“You want to win every single game that you play,” he said. “But this week, since this is the only week that we’ve got, you definitely want to go out there and keep proving ourselves.”
