This is the third preseason in 12 years the Bears have the same head coach, offensive play-caller and starting quarterback working together as they did the previous year.
They should act like it.
The team’s first exhibition game is less than two weeks away. If history is any indication, quarterback Caleb Williams won’t play in it. If common sense has any say, the same will be true of the Bears’ next two preseason games.
Williams was seemingly everywhere this offseason, from hype lists to video game covers. Bears fans should hope the opposite is true in August.
There’s no reason to play Williams in games. That’s not a declaration that Williams is a finished product. Far from it — the Bears have a specific list of traits they absolutely need him to improve before the Sept. 13 opener in Charlotte, and certainly before they decide to pay him like a franchise quarterback. His accuracy needs to improve, as does his ability to create chunk completions on the run. He needs to fine-tune how he reads coverages.
Rather, holding Williams out of preseason games would be the reward for the quarterback and coach Ben Johnson establishing their on-field chemistry last year. Risking injury for the sake of more reps with Johnson on the headset and Williams listening for play calls just doesn’t make sense.
Johnson wasn’t ready to lay out his game plan Monday for the Bears’ Aug. 15 preseason opener against the Browns at Soldier Field. But he didn’t commit to playing Williams, or any of his starters, in the opener.
The stretching portion before the game might be something different. Of course, there are no defenders trying to plant you into the ground then, either.
“I think it’s probably always good to at least go through the warmup procedure to where Game 1 [of the regular season] is not the first time at doing that,” Johnson, who doubles as the offensive play-caller, said before Monday’s practice. “So there’s a lot of merit in that regard, and we’ll see what it looks like. But we haven’t made a determination yet.”
The schedule seems to indicate otherwise. The Bears have a practice scheduled for the day after their first preseason game, the same way they did last year. Williams didn’t play the first preseason game in 2025, and neither did the majority of the Bears’ starters. They were all able to practice the next day.
The next two preseason games — Aug. 22 in Cincinnati and Aug. 29 in Nashville — each come two days after a joint practice. Johnson figures to put more stock in practices against the Bengals and Titans, with the added bonus of having more control over the injury risk than he would in a game.
“We need all these guys to be as healthy as we possibly can going into the season because it’s a long year,” Johnson said. “But at the same time, we want to make sure that we’re prepped and we’re ready also. We’re looking at numbers. We got sports science data, the number of reps we’re getting, the quality of the reps that we’re getting, it all goes into it.”
The benefits of holding joint practices on the road have nothing to do with who plays in games.
“I think it’s a great chance for our team to come together,” Johnson said. “When you go on the road in particular, there’s really not family. It’s you, it’s your buddies, it’s the hotel.”
The Bears played Williams in 14 snaps in the second preseason game last year and 28 in Game 3. But that was his first time working with Johnson, and he was still in the process of learning not only the playbook, but the pre-snap protocol. He knows both this year. Sure, Williams has a new center with which to grow comfortable this month — but Garrett Bradbury has 105 career starts. He knows what he’s doing.
Johnson has stressed toughness since his arrival, but that’s built on practice fields, not random Saturdays in August. The Bears will scrimmage during training camp and figure to have at least one repeat of last year’s grueling, violent showdown practice. That should be enough.
“It’s going to be a demanding ordeal,” Johnson said.
Increasingly, the best veteran quarterbacks — at least not named Patrick Mahomes — don’t play much this time of year. Jared Goff, whom Johnson mentored in Detroit, hasn’t taken a snap in a preseason game since 2022. Aaron Rodgers told Steelers coaches he wanted to play in exhibition games, coach Mike McCarthy said Monday, but the team was still evaluating what it wanted to do.
As for Williams, the Bears have been here before. Entering his second season with Mitch Trubisky, coach Matt Nagy decided the quarterback wouldn’t throw a single preseason pass. The Bears were beaten by the Packers in an ugly Week 1 and stumbled through 2019. Nagy, a year later, said he regretted not playing Trubisky more.
“It sets the mentality,” Nagy said.
Williams isn’t Trubisky — at least the Bears hope not. And they hope Johnson has a staying power that Nagy never found.
They can’t decide Williams’ playing time this preseason based on the ghosts of quarterbacks past. Johnson and Williams, after all, are trying to break that mold.
“We’ll be smart,” Johnson said.
