Amid a downward spiral in the loss column and trudging forward after a change at offensive coordinator, Caleb Williams remains poised to put together one of the best seasons in Chicago Bears quarterback history, despite the bumps in the road to come and all the chaos that has already unfolded around him.
Heading into their Thanksgiving day matchup with the behemoth that has been the Detroit Lions over the first 12 weeks of the 2024 regular season, the Bears stand at 4-7 and are firmly in the basement of the NFC North, all despite a hearty amount of talent on the roster that had some preseason prognosticators believing Chicago had a chance to punch above their weight class (me included).
But that just hasn’t been the case.
The list of problems afflicting this team is well documented and those problems fit right in with the recent lore of the Bears franchise.
After a 4-2 start that featured a three-game stretch where Chicago went 3-0 and the offense averaged 31.7 points-per-game, the Bears scored 27 points total over their next three contests — all losses — and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron was fired, becoming the sixth OC to lose his job in Chicago over the last ten seasons.
The offensive line continues to be porous in pass protection — the Bears are second-to-last in sacks allowed (44) this season, trailing only the Cleveland browns (47).
Chicago finished with the most sacks allowed in the NFL in 2021 — 58, which is the exact same amount they gave up in 2022 when they gave up the fourth-most in football. They haven’t finished outside the top 10 in that category since 2020 when they gave up 36 sacks, which was 16th-most in the NFL that year.
After finishing second-to-last in sacks on defense a year ago, the Bears are middle of the pack in 2024 with 28 sacks, good for 13th in the league, but after notching 18 sacks in their first six games, Chicago has registered ten in their last five.
Then there’s the bad stuff that stands in contrast of recent lore, like how the Bears run defense is giving up an average of 151 rush yards and nearly five yards-per-carry (4.93) over their last five games. This comes after they gave up the fewest rush yards in the NFL in 2023.
The result? A five-game losing streak that’s landed them at 4-7, but Caleb Williams has not been a part of that equation of late.
“I don’t think we expect things like that to happen. I just believe that we got to, we have to execute better down the stretch. We got to coach better down the stretch,” Eberflus said after their overtime loss to the Minnesota Vikings last Sunday. “It’s an everybody thing and again, is it difficult? Yeah, it’s difficult. You know, you lose three games like this, I think it is difficult.
“But again, you got to be tough. This league, it’s not going to feel sorry for you.”
Williams completed 60-of-81 passes for 687 yards and 7 TD passes with one interception over that aforementioned three-game win streak. While Williams did not account for a touchdown over their next four games, he has played turnover-free football since their Hail Mary loss at the Washington Commanders, when Williams lost his second fumble of the season.
Purely looking at interceptions, Williams hasn’t thrown one since Oct. 13. He left too much air on a throw deep down the left sideline to DJ Moore during the second quarter of their 35-16 win against the Jacksonville Jaguars in London, resulting in Andre Cisco picking him off.
The last time Williams threw an interception on U.S. soil was Sept. 22 at the Indianapolis Colts, a game he finished with a career high 363 passing yards, on top of 2 TD passes and 2 INT.
A spotless record in the interception column has Williams on the precipice of an NFL rookie record.
Heading into their matchup against Detroit, Williams has an active streak of 193 pass attempts without an interception. If he goes without throwing an interception in his next 19 pass attempts, Williams will surpass Kyler Murray (211 consecutive attempts in 2019) for the longest streak of pass attempts without an interception by a rookie in NFL history.
When it comes to franchise marks, he continues to expand the Bears rookie quarterback record for passing yards (2,356 and counting). Williams is also tied with “Chuckin'” Charlie O’Rourke for the most TD passes by a rookie quarterback in team history (11), who set the record back in 1942. he can pass him with a TD pass on Thanksgiving.
With six games remaining, Chicago’s single season franchise records for passing yards and TD passes are held by Erik Kramer, who threw for 3,838 yards and 29 TD passes during the 1995 NFL season.
Over the Bears final six games of the regular season, Williams will need to average 247.2 pass yards per game to leapfrog Kramer in passing yards, and 3 TD passes per game to at least tie him in passing touchdowns.
In two games under new offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, Williams has averaged 285.5 yards and one TD pass per game, which if maintained, would put him on pass to break Kramer’s single season franchise mark in passing yards, and give Chicago its first 4,000-yard passer in team history
“I think time on task has been extremely important. You can’t ever beat that, being able to have time on task,” Williams said Tuesday. “I think that has provided a sense of clarity, a sense of belief and things like that.”
The 2022 Heisman Trophy winner went 32-of-47 for 340 yards and 2 TD passes, both of which came in the back half of the fourth quarter and helped fuel a furious 11-point barrage in the last 22 seconds of regulation to tie the game.
“Yeah, just true grit, really inspiring the whole football team, and just really good execution. He did a really good job of [executing], I thought all day,” Eberflus said of Williams’s performance against Minnesota. “Because … that’s a tough defense to go against with the different looks and the pressures and the variation of coverage. I thought he did a really good job of finding the space … and getting the ball to our skill [players].
“He also changed the speed of the ball that he was throwing — sometimes he was throwing it in there [like] a dart, and then sometimes he lobbed it … He’s growing in front of our eyes and today was really good growth for him.”
Since Brown took over as offensive coordinator, Williams late-game heroics from earlier in the season have reappeared, but he’s also become more decisive and quicker distributing the football in the face of pressure.
In Week 11 against the Green Bay Packers, Williams was blitzed on 30.8% of his dropbacks (12) and went 8-for-10 with 87 yards, earning a 94.5 offensive grade and 92.0 passing grade from Pro Football Focus in those situations.
Week 12 against the Vikings proved to be an even more arduous task facing the blitz, but Williams again found rhythm in the face of pressure.
Heading into last Sunday, per Pro Football Reference, Flores blitzed 157 times in ten games — 11 more times than the second-place Broncos, who had played in one more game. Averaged out, the Vikings had blitzed on 37.7% of QB drop-backs, and pressured QBs a league-high 29.6% of the time on those drop-backs.
As it turned out, Brian Flores turned up the pressure even more on the Bears rookie quarterback, which is a common trend of a Flores-led defense.
“He’s the king of cover zero blitz and finding a bunch of different ways to do it,” Williams said of the Vikings defensive coordinator on Nov. 20. “They’ll switch it up and just fly [Harrison Smith] out from two yards away from me, and fly him all the way back to the safety and things like that.”
Williams was blitzed on 42.6% of his drop-backs (23) and finished the game 15-for-20 with 192 yards and 2 TD passes when blitzed. He earned a 92.4 offensive grade and a 92.0 passing grade from PFF.
“The biggest thing was having answers, whether it was alerts or hot routes, or making a few checks. Sometimes with those, they’ll make their checks and you’ll just have to live with it,” Williams said Sunday. “And then from there, you go out there and they make a play, you make a play, and it goes back-and-forth with a defense like that. So, you just got to stay in the game. You stay right there, levelheaded.”
Williams was asked about the positives from how Brown has coached him to play quarterback since taking over at offensive coordinator. He said it basically boils down to how his new OC carries himself on a day-to-day basis.
“Thomas [Brown], to be honest with you, I really think it’s just how he is, has helped. It’s just his — I don’t want to use this word — but aura,” Williams said. “He just has a certain aura to him that allows you to play free. He knows what he wants, whether it’s checks, alerts and all of that.
“But, being able to play free … like last game, throughout the whole game, talking to me, communicating to me when it gets to two minutes, and like today at the end of the game before OT, [he’s] just like, ‘Now it’s time to go be Superman,’ and go do all those different things I can do.”
While Williams may have been Superman in the waning moments of the fourth quarter against the Vikings, overtime was a different story. Showing some of his youthful inexperience, he dropped back for more than eight seconds, trying to buy time to make a pass that never came to be.
Williams was dropped by Jonathan Greenard for a 12-yard loss on second down, moments before he couldn’t get the ball snapped in time before a delay of game penalty on third down, and the Bears punted away on their only offensive drive in overtime.
“I held the ball too long and they made a great play,” Williams said. “I should have just thrown the ball out of bounds, live to fight another down, another play, and it’s not what happened.”
Another one of those bumps in the road that often come throughout a player’s rookie season and are needed to learn from, but is a mistake that Williams owns and continues to work through.
According to the former USC trojan, he and his teammates aren’t the type to give up. He said the progress they’ve shown on offense is promising and will hopefully help get Chicago back in the win column on Thanksgiving.
“You don’t want to be around people that are quitting, that are giving up. That’s not the type of guys we have. So, that’s encouraging,” Williams said. I think we got better on offense, we’ve gotten better over these past couple games. I think today was a testament to that — being decisive, receivers and everybody.
“It’s a tough loss just because you get the ball in overtime and you don’t go and seal the deal. I like to pride myself on two minute [drills] and stuff like that. I like to pride myself on efficient drives and that’s not what happened today.”
