QB Caleb Williams off to promising start in Year 2 but has more to prove when Bears resume vs. Commanders
Caleb Williams is playing better, and given the Bears’ history at quarterback and his own turbulent rookie season, that’s a big deal. All the qualifiers and caveats are secondary to the fact that he is progressing under coach Ben Johnson.
It can’t stop there, though.
When it comes to Williams, this season is all about the Bears determining whether he’s truly on track to be their franchise quarterback. They need clear evidence that he can carry their future.
He must show a lot more, but so far, so good. His 97.8 passer rating is 14th in the NFL and 10 points better than last season, and most of his other statistics are modestly improved, as well. He’s throwing about twice as many touchdown passes per game, his passing yards per game are up from 208.3 to 231.8 and he has been sacked on only 5% of his drop-backs, compared to 11% last season.
That’s partly because he lit up the Cowboys and former coach Matt Eberflus, now their defensive coordinator, in Week 3. They’ve allowed the most yards, second-most points and second-highest passer rating in the league.
Williams threw four touchdown passes and put up 298 yards against them for a career-best 142.6 passer rating. Over the other three games, however, he was at 83.3.
It’s up to Williams to prove that was a legitimate step in the right direction, not merely an outlier against a bad opponent. Mitch Trubisky famously threw six touchdown passes in a 2018 game against a terrible Buccaneers team, and that memory endures as more of a warning about false hope than anything else.
The Bears are off this weekend but resume with a huge game Oct. 13 at the Commanders. Williams will return to where he grew up and take on quarterback Jayden Daniels, who went second in the draft last year after the Bears took Williams No. 1.
They’ll follow with games against the Saints, Ravens, Bengals and Giants. None of the upcoming five opponents ranks higher than 18th in points allowed, so there are no excuses.
Two of the top-line goals for Williams this season are to complete 70% of his passes — a target set by Johnson — and to establish definitively that he’s in the top third of the league’s quarterbacks.
The completion percentage hasn’t been there. He’s at 62.3, which is right in line with the 62.5 he hit as a rookie. NFL Next Gen Stats charted him at a league-worst 10.2 points below his expected completion percentage, which is based on receiver separation and other factors.
Williams was under nonstop pressure in the Bears’ recent win over the Raiders and completed only 59.5% of his passes, though he appeared to figure out the pass rush as he went and rebounded from a 2-for-7 start to go 20-for-30 the rest of the way.
That points to another area where he needs to make strides: steadiness. The Bears seem to be getting two totally different versions of Williams over the course of a game. He was hot at the start against the Vikings, then ice-cold as the game slipped away. It was the opposite in Las Vegas.
While it’s great that Williams already has shown a knack for making plays with the game on the line, fewer games will go down to the wire if he plays more evenly. His career quarter-by-quarter passer rating fluctuates from 82.7 in the third to 96.1 in the fourth.
Patrick Mahomes, for example, has quarter splits within a 6.5 differential. He’s fairly predictable for his coaches. He is in his ninth season and already has a Hall of Fame-worthy career, but it’s an important comparison because Williams is trying to get to where Mahomes already stands.
It’ll also be big for Williams to lead the Bears to wins, as he helped do in Las Vegas.
That will be difficult if the team can’t fix some of its biggest problems right now: a sputtering running game, uncertainty at left tackle and a vulnerable defense.
If those issues persist, it’s asking a lot of Williams to overcome them on a regular basis. But that’s part of the job. Great quarterbacks improvise under duress and rise above adverse circumstances.
If the Bears keep giving up 29 points per game, they need Williams to get them to 30. If left tackle is going to be a liability, they need Williams to adapt. If the running game never really gets going, they need him to be reliable as a high-volume passer.
It’s a high bar, but it should be.
General manager Ryan Poles bet his job security on taking Williams over Daniels. Johnson jumped at the head-coaching vacancy in large part because he envisioned a long-term future with Williams. By the time Williams is up for a contract extension, the going rate for quarterbacks could top $70 million per season.
With that kind of investment, everyone needs to be sure of what Williams is. This is his time to convince them.