When he’s not trying to extinguish a self-ignited media firestorm about wanting to avoid being drafted by the Bears, quarterback Caleb Williams has plenty of other work to do.
The Bears have supplied him with everything he could want. They paid up for the hottest coaching candidate on the market in Ben Johnson, revamped the offensive line with expensive veterans and used their first two draft picks on offensive weapons. The other half of the equation is Williams’ individual improvement.
Johnson took the job not because of how Williams played as a rookie, which was up and down amid the Bears’ turmoil, but because of what he believed he could become. He got right to work on shepherding him down that path, beginning with his footwork, his approach to film study and his body language.
“I guess it’s the Ben Johnson effect, right?” Williams said Wednesday, taking a playful jab at Johnson’s reputation as a wizard of quarterback play. “He’s going to get a kick out of that when he hears it.”
Seriously, though.
“Details, being on top of it, the huddle, pre-snap procedure — all of these things matter,” Williams said. “Especially in big games and big moments, all the little things come up. That’s important to him, and it’s important to us. We have to get on top of it.”
One thing Johnson has made clear in his first four months or so on the job is that there is no leeway. Players criticized his predecessors — coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron — for letting mistakes slide and allowing carelessness to undermine practices. That won’t happen under Johnson.
Wednesday in practice, part of voluntary organized team activities, there were multiple times when the Bears’ offense broke the huddle and Johnson stopped the players and sent them back to redo it because the play wasn’t being called with the correct cadence and the break of the huddle didn’t convey “that we’re ready for business” to his liking.
“If it doesn’t sound that way, then we’re just not going to allow the practice to go south,” Johnson said. “Fatigue is something that we’re going to combat. The mental toughness has to come through [by] still doing the little things correctly.”
He’s going to demand that it looks right, sounds right and is right. A coach can’t insist upon that, then let players decide that some aspects of the job aren’t worth their full effort.
Within that philosophy, Johnson flagged some issues in the film from Williams’ rookie season. He completed 62.5% of his passes, totaled 3,541 passing yards and threw 20 touchdown passes and six interceptions for an 87.8 passer rating (24th in the NFL). He had stretches of promising progress but also ruts riddled with inaccurate passes and holding the ball too long.
But beyond that, Johnson saw passivity and aimlessness in Williams’ body language at times. Whether he was slow to get up after being hit or throwing his hands up in frustration, his disposition fell short of, “We’re steering the ship; we’re going in the right direction.”
“We sat down and watched some tape from a year ago, and we talked it through,” Johnson said. “It’s like, ‘Is this what we want to look like or not?’ We came to an agreement, no, it’s not.
“Body language is a huge thing — demeanor. We don’t want to be a ‘palms-up’ team where we’re questioning everything. That’s a little bit of a sign of weakness.”
You catch that, DJ Moore?
Much of what Johnson is drilling into Williams, who received an inadequate education from Eberflus and Waldron, is what to do before the snap when it comes to composure and clarity in the huddle, as well as resilient, determined body language.
But each play starts well before that. Days before, actually.
In the book excerpt that revealed his concerns about the Bears, Williams also said he had no guidance on how to watch film in preparation for a game. The Bears essentially got him a tutor by signing 12-year veteran Case Keenum, who isn’t bound by the collective bargaining agreement’s restrictions on time coaches can spend with players.
“I watched Caleb from afar last year and was like, ‘Holy cow, this guy is really good, and he’s got a chance to be a lot better,’ ’’ Keenum said. “It’s been so much fun coming here and being a part of that quarterback room.
“He’s just a sponge. For being an all-world talent . . . [he is] humble enough to ask me questions and watch and learn, which has been really refreshing.”
The Bears should have done all this a year ago. At least they’re doing it at all, as opposed to the faulty infrastructure that hindered Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields throughout their time in Chicago.
Those are good examples of why Williams and his family were right to be skeptical of an organization that has mishandled and misled quarterbacks throughout its recent history.
Trubisky and Fields endured dysfunction and early coaching changes, and any concerns Williams had were validated by the end of November, when the Bears fired Eberflus and Waldron and he was well on his way to taking a franchise-record 68 sacks behind an unreliable offensive line.
But it appears that everything around Williams has been fixed. Now it’s on him to do something with it.