Caleb Williams was detailing what was different Sunday when he said something that sounded obvious: new offensive coordinator Thomas Brown called the plays into Williams’ helmet faster than Shane Waldron ever did.
“Thomas being in control, just getting a few calls in super-fast,” Williams said after the soul-sucking 20-19 loss to the rival Packers. “As soon as a play happened, Thomas was right on the headset giving me the play.”
The quick calls enabled the Bears to break the huddle and get to the line of scrimmage, where they had time to vary their cadence “so the D-line can’t get a jump on the snap,” Williams said.
“Those small things always tend to be large,” he said.
Williams uttered those words after the Bears’ 10th game of the season. Certainly, the Bears were aware of Waldron’s slow relay before he was fired last week and tried to fix it, right?
Right?
“That was way better in terms of the energy and the timing of it,” coach Matt Eberflus said Monday. “That’s going to be good going forward, too.”
But why wasn’t it fixed before? Why didn’t Eberflus realize Williams wanted the call faster? Or that Williams was better with short dropback passes? Or if he realized it, why didn’t Eberflus change anything before firing Waldron?
A team that spent all season declaring how proud it was to communicate in meetings couldn’t provide what, in retrospect, seemed like obvious answers for the No. 1 overall pick.
Quick study
The solution Eberflus settled on was drastic, if needed. It forced Williams into a situation that few rookie quarterbacks have had to deal with: having a play-caller fired midseason. In an act of leadership, Williams apologized to his teammates during a meeting last week for his role in the sputtering offense that led to the dismissal.
Perhaps sensing the toll a difficult week was having on Williams, Lincoln Riley, his former coach at Oklahoma and USC, called the quarterback last week. Williams was reminded of the coach’s advice when Williams was impatient to start as a freshman: “keep going.”
“Keep our head down and find ways to win,” Williams said.
The Bears didn’t win Sunday. But they did start to find answers. That Brown figured it out in five days — he wasn’t named play-caller until Tuesday after Eberflus hemmed and hawed for a day — speaks poorly to the Bears’ operation in the weeks beforehand.
Brown’s first game as play-caller produced only 19 points — only seven teams scored fewer Sunday — but nonetheless qualified as a step forward for Williams, who was steered back on track. Williams went 23-for-31 for 231 yards and a passer rating of 95 in his best game since the Bears left London.
Brown helped build up his quarterback’s confidence by calling quick-hitter plays. Williams released the ball in an average of 2.42 seconds, the fastest time this season, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. He was 15-for-18 on quick passes, when he was pressured 20.5 percent of the time, another season low.
That’s his strength. Pro Football Focus gives Williams the fifth-highest grade in the NFL on short throws. His grade on throws of 20 or more yards is the worst in the league.
Getting Moore creative
After being sacked 15 times in the previous two games, Williams was sacked three times Sunday. Two came on the first two plays of the game’s final drive. Williams stepped into the pocket and was hit on first down. On second down, Rashan Gary shoved left tackle Braxton Jones — whose self-declared weakness is a strong bull rush — into the quarterback and sacked him.
Moore played a major part in the Bears’ quick throw game, totaling more receiving yards in the first half Sunday than he’d had in an entire game since Oct. 6. Brown was creative in getting Moore in the ball — in the first half alone, he took a pop pass while in motion for five yards, a fly sweep for five more and a screen pass for 16.
“He’s like a running back with the ball in his hands,” Eberflus said.
Moore’s fly sweeps and pop passes were based on motions that Brown featured more than Waldron ever did. He comes off the Rams’ coaching tree, where pre-snap motion is a hallmark of Sean McVay’s offense.
Waldron favored going no-huddle to try to give Williams clues at the line of scrimmage about what the defense was planning. Pre-snap motions gave Williams a different kind of advantage — to either displace defenders before runs or give receivers leverage on throws.
“Then sometimes it also mixes up people’s eyes, safeties and things like that, to be able to hit explosive [plays],” Williams said. “To be able to gain easy access throws with maybe DBs and things like that, backing off, once you get a motion going their way, maybe a fast motion or a slow motion going their way.
“They’ll back off and get a free access [release] for five yards, maybe more, with the type of guys we have. So those motions help us.”
So did condensed formations. With 39 seconds left in the third quarter, the Bears were lined up with three players — Rome Odunze, Keenan Allen and tight end Cole Kmet — split left. They stayed tight to the formation — all three were inside the left number with the ball at the left hash. Williams pitched to D’Andre Swift, who ran behind pulling tackle Braxton Jones and a pulling receiver in Allen. Allen kicked out cornerback Carrington Valentine, Jones crunched safety Evan Williams to the ground and Swift ran up the left sideline for a 39-yard touchdown.
Angles from condensed formations and scrambles by Williams helped the Bears produce four run plays of more than 10 yards after posting seven, combined, the last three games.
Consider that another answer on a day in which Williams, for the first time in three games, started finding some.
“You work super hard throughout the week, and then not being able to go down and score is frustrating and tough, as you may assume,” Williams said. “Being able to do it [Sunday], I think it builds confidence for us.”