The Bears have played the Ravens without Lamar Jackson, the Bengals without Joe Burrow and the Steelers without Aaron Rodgers. They knocked Packers quarterback out of Saturday’s game and hurt his backup, too, when Montez Sweat sacked Malik Willis and slammed his shoulder into the ground on the last play of regulation.
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, though, keeps taking snaps.
Williams has been on the field for all but 11 of the Bears’ plays this season. Entering Week 17, only the Titans’ Cam Ward and the Broncos’ Bo Nix had played more frequently than Williams’ 98.9% snap rate.
Williams did the same thing last year, too, also playing exactly 98.9% of the time. He’s never missed a start in his NFL career. Since the start of the 2024 season, only six other NFL quarterbacks have made every start. Only Nix has played a higher percentage of snaps than Williams the past two years.
If the old NFL saw is true — that availability is the best ability — then Williams is one of the league’s elite quarterbacks. That durability is a major reason why the 11-4 Bears are in the playoffs and chasing a division title as they prepare to play the 49ers on Sunday night.
“You can only grow so much from the sideline …” Williams said. “The things that I do on the football field have come from repetitions and hard work and things like that. But it also comes from me being able to go out there and be 100% for the guys. And so, like I said, I take great pride.”
Is it luck? It is a skill?
“I think it’s a little bit of both,” offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said. “Any time guys get to this level, how they take care of their body — what they do away from the building — is really important. I think he has done a really good job of that. …
“And then there’s another factor there — that is luck. You’re playing a violent sport, and yet he’s been healthy.”
Coach Ben Johnson points to Williams’ body composition. Williams is only 6-foot-1 but has the strong, thick legs of a cartoon bulldog. He focuses on building core and leg strength in his training sessions.
“I think that’s why it is very difficult to bring him down in the pocket,” Johnson said. “You see all of these guys that feel like they have him dead to rights — he finds a way to escape. It’s not just his quickness, but also his strength as well.”
Williams was sacked 68 times last year, the most in the NFL and tied for the third-most ever. He was hit an additional 40 times while throwing. This year, he’s been sacked 23 times and has been hit 35 times.
“This year, even though the sack numbers are down a little bit, he’s still getting hit quite a bit,” Johnson said. “He takes his training seriously in the offseason and I think that carries over to the year — and so he’s able to withstand some of this stuff.”
Or run away from it. Williams scrambles on a league-high one-fifth of his plays, either to throw from outside the pocket or run with the ball. He averages a league-best 3.21 seconds to throw; no quarterback with 10 or more starts this year averages more than 3.
Of the 44 quarterbacks who threw at least 100 passes through the first 16 weeks of the season, only six have been sacked less frequently than Williams. He’s been sacked on 4.5% of his dropbacks after being sacked on 10.8% of them last year.
Browns coach Kevin Stefanski called Williams “as elusive as anyone is in the league,” while the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin marveled that he does a “nice job of extending plays without a whole lot of negativity.”
Johnson’s playbook deserves some of the credit. The Bears have run the ball 465 times this year, six shy of the NFL-leading Bills. Every handoff is one less opportunity for their quarterback to get hurt.
“He is in harm’s way a little bit less on some of those plays,” Doyle said.
In a dangerous sport, Williams has found the best way to stay on the field. That’s essential to his success — and that of the Bears.
“In my mind, we have the best shot with me at quarterback,” he said. “And that’s just how I go about my day, how I go about my business. So me being able to be out there for the guys is important to me.”