True leadership grows organically, and the Bears hope quarterback Caleb Williams is ready to fully step into that role when they open training camp Wednesday.
It can’t be forced, as it was when Williams was a rookie and the team wanted him to run the show on a roster stocked with veterans. It can’t be rushed, either, as it was a year ago when Williams could barely stay afloat while trying to learn coach Ben Johnson’s offense, let alone worry about what anyone else was doing.
Training camp was such a nightmare — Johnson was all over him starting with his huddle command and pre-snap process — that Williams questioned whether his coach liked him. Williams said last month he expected camp would be “a hell of a lot more fun for me” this year now that he’s in sync with Johnson.
“I feel like I was drowning,” he said of last summer.
There’s been a lot of talk from the Bears, including directly from Williams and Johnson, over the last few months about how far ahead the team will be compared to this time last year, but it’s just talk until there’s proof. If it’s true, it’ll be evident with a smooth start to camp.
Williams is going into Year 3, and even accounting for all the turbulence he weathered as a rookie, this is roughly the time when most great quarterbacks find their way.
It shouldn’t take weeks or months for him to hit his stride. Everything Williams does should look and sound right, from the huddle through the end of the play. And he needs to be so on top of his own responsibilities that he has the bandwidth to keep teammates on track as an extension of Johnson.
“That’s a part of growth,” he said. “You don’t just get [that authority] just because of the position. You’ve got to work hard, you’ve got to grow and you’ve got to win.
“Be the same guy every day. Come in here and work. Do all the things right that I’m supposed to do. If there’s extra that I need to do — if it’s sitting down and talking to them, if it’s on the field and you’ve got to yell and get them back to the huddle, or any of those little things. It’s whatever it takes to get to the end goal.”
Johnson said Williams being able to run the team as a pseudo-coach, “comes with the comfort level in terms of knowing what’s being asked of the offense.” He saw improvement in that area during Organized Team Activities and minicamp and said Williams “certainly is a vocal presence within our offense and our entire team.”
Williams earned a lot of credibility with teammates last season by leading the Bears to seven fourth-quarter comebacks, including one in the playoffs. That also made him one of the NFL’s most popular players. And it helped that Johnson, while still critical, backed him emphatically.
But Madden covers and other accolades will melt away when camp starts. Johnson won’t care about any of that if the offense is clunky and Williams hasn’t spent his offseason fixing some of the flaws that have held him back the last two seasons.
In all the excitement over Williams — When was the last time there was this big of a groundswell, both locally and nationally, behind a Bears quarterback? — it could be easy to lose sight of how much work he still must do.
The fanbase doesn’t seem to want to hear any criticism of Williams at the moment, but Johnson doesn’t have any aversion to it. Both things can be true simultaneously: He’s exciting player with a bright future and he’s still got a long way to go.
Johnson loves Williams’ improvisational skills, but he’s far too precise and calculated of a tactician to have his quarterback play the whole game like that. Johnson enjoyed the heroics, but said consistently he didn’t think that was a sustainable formula.
It wouldn’t have taken much for some of those victories to flip to losses, and Williams would be viewed much differently if, perhaps, three games had gone the other way. That’s the warning heading into this season.
Johnson has his eye on Williams’ completion percentage, which was a league-low 58.1 among players who threw at least 250 passes. If that feels like nitpicking after a season in which he set the franchise record for yards passing (3,942) and led the Bears to their first playoff win in 15 years, take it up with the coach.
Johnson set the bar at 70% a year ago and said that standard applied not only to season but to every day of training camp and practice. Williams never hit that mark in a game.
It’s not a definitive statistic, but it’s vital to the efficiency Johnson wants to see in the passing attack. Raising his completion percentage also would reflect that Williams has fully adopted what Johnson and quarterbacks coach J.T. Barrett have been teaching him about footwork and timing.
Williams’ first two years were wild. His season with former coach Matt Eberflus was dysfunctional across the board and he got sacked like crazy, and things didn’t click between him and Johnson, in Williams’ mind, until November. This is the time for him to level out as a player and take control as a leader, and those goals are inextricable from each other.