When a quarterback comes into the NFL with the tag of being ‘a generational talent,’ it’s typically because they possess a superpower of some sort… a facet of their game that stands out above everything else, even if you’re just a novice watching this particular player for the first time. Think the accuracy of Joe Burrow, the arm strength of Matthew Stafford, the computer-brain of Peyton Manning, or the last name of Eli Manning.
For Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, that superpower was his ability to turn the Pac-12 into the greatest backyard football league in the country. This may sound like a backhanded complimented, but truth be told, there is nothing backhanded about it. At USC, Caleb Williams made a habit of turning the impossible into incredible, flashing a Patrick Mahomesian-level of improvisational skill with stunning regularity.
Unfortunately — and for some, predictably — this skill hasn’t translated to the NFL as quickly or easily as the Chicago Bears hoped. It goes without saying, but there is a different caliber of athlete in the NFL than there was in the Pac-12, and on a regular basis, Caleb Williams has learned this the hard way.
However, the Chicago Bears know that letting Caleb to be Caleb gives the former 1st overall pick the best chance of reaching his ceiling as a pro. As former Detroit Pistons coach Chuck Daly once said about Dennis Rodman, you don’t put a saddle on a mustang, and in Chicago, there seems to be an understanding that it’s necessary to not only allow, but encourage Caleb Williams to be himself on the football field.
“His superpower is when he’s extending,” Bears offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said earlier this week, per Larry Mayer of ChicagoBears.com. “We’ll encourage him to do that, to extend plays and go make yards. When he takes off, he’s pretty fast and he can roll. It’s something that we’re excited about in our offense.”
In Chicago’s Week 1 game against the Minnesota Vikings, we saw the upside of this superpower. Caleb Williams rushed for 58 yards and a touchdown, the first of his career. He picked up four first downs with his legs and had an 83.3% success rate on his rushes. In comparison to last season, this represents incredible growth. Even as a passer, there were instances when Caleb shined on plays when he escaped the pocket and made an accurate throw on the run.
“It’s something that certainly can provide a lot of value for our offense,” Doyle added. “It’s something that you don’t want to lean away from. You don’t want to say, ‘Hey, be a robot and sit in there.’”
However, there is a down side to encouraging too much of this as Caleb and the rest of the Bears are still getting up to speed with the new system that first-year head coach Ben Johnson brought over with him from Detroit.
Bears Must Find Line Between Allowing Caleb Williams to Feel Comfortable and Continue to Evolve
Inherently, the offense that Ben Johnson figures to have brought with him to Chicago from Detroit is one that runs in contrast with some of what figures to be Caleb Williams’ superpower. That’s not to say that the Bears have or will ignore it. Johnson has been very clear about the fact that he’ll allow this offense to evolve based on the skillsets of his players, but there are still fundamental features of the way that Caleb plays that bump up against the scheme.
Consider, in 2024, Caleb Williams’ average time to throw was 3.13 seconds, which was the fourth-longest in the league. Now this could possible be written off as the previous coaching staff’s inability to scheme up open pass-catchers, which was abundantly clear to anyone who watched the Bears with any regularity in 2024. The fact that Chicago ranked 30th in the league in play-action frequency and had one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL explains most of this away, but offseason changes should theoretically negate each of those problems.
The Bears spent a lot of their offseason resources on bolstering the offensive line, adding three new starters along the interior. The jury is still out as to whether this problem is actually solved, particularly after a rough showing against the Vikings. In Detroit, Ben Johnson’s offense was one of the league’s top teams in both play-action and pre-snap motion. The Bears figure to be among the league leaders in those categories in 2025.
To at least some extent, though, there’s still a stubborn unwillingness to take the easy throw that Caleb Williams has displayed dating back to his time at USC. Even in college, Caleb Williams’ average time to throw was right in that 3.2 to 3.5 second range, absurdly long for a successful college quarterback, but again, Caleb’s superpower was able to win out more often than not, whether he was scrambling or making a throw outside of the pocket.
On Monday, Caleb looked like a guy who was stuck between two styles of play, unsure of which one he should let take over. There was times when it felt like he was being too timid, unwilling to let the ball rip down the field, instead checking it down and getting a completion, which had been a mandate of Ben Johnson all offseason. Other times, it felt like Caleb was diverting to his old ways, holding onto the ball too long, occasionally to the detriment of the possession.
What we have here is a quarterback going through a mental tug-of-war, and as a result, despite some flashes of what made him a truly special prospect, I came away from Week 1 with just as many questions as I did heading into the season. Strangely though, I also walk away with a greater sense of optimism that this will all end up working out, not only because of the gifts that Caleb possesses, but also because the coaching staff is actually thinking about all of this.
“We do have some rules that tell us to go eyes up and look for a big play downfield — and then we’ll end up looking top-down from there,” Johnson said, per Patrick Finley of the Chicago Sun-Times. “And then at other times, we’re looking to go take off and run on our own. It really depends on the play, the situation and the defense.”
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