There were no sideline theatrics, no pouting on the end of the bench.
Caleb Williams and DJ Moore looked like a thing on Sunday, for the first time. The end result was two touchdown passes, a 304-yard passing day for Williams with Moore grabbing five of those for 105 yards in a 36-10 rout of the Carolina Panthers.
"We're going to have some hiccups and ups and downs," Moore said, toting his two children along at the postgame press conference. "It was a lot of ups today. We just need to ride that wave of being on the up with everything."
The wave washed away the Panthers defense, and Carolina hadn't really been a bad pass defense coming into the game. They were middle of the pack but their run defense was terrible. Sunday, Williams and the Bears offense made the full Carolina defense look bad.
They did it after their own defense failed first, as they countered with a 70-yard drive to the tying points on Williams' 34-yard TD pass to Moore. On the route, Moore came all the way across the field and the Panthers lost him. They had him for five years and yet they couldn't find him this day.
"I've been wanting to hit one of those," Williams said. "DJ is such a special player and y'all saw it today, him making plays. I think at one point, he was 100-something (yards) for a couple catches and things like that. Having a special player like that on your team, you want to get him the ball and let him just be DJ and be special. It felt really good. We were super excited.
"We get to the sideline and we are both like, finally, we're able to hit something like that."
The second throw for a TD was the 30-yarder in the second quarter to put the Bears up 27-7. Moore had one-on-one coverage, Williams saw it and found him in the end zone 24 seconds before halftime.
"It was just a dot," Moore said. "We worked that in practice. When he threw it I was like, 'man, it's a touchdown,' because I knew I crossed the corner's face and there was nobody in the middle of the field. I was like it's my ball or nobody's, and 99% of the time, it's my ball."
Williams wasn't just throwing to Moore in this one, although the biggest plays went to him.
CALEB WILLIAMS AND BEARS PASSING GAME GO DOWNFIELD FOR 36-10 WIN
Rome Odunze caught five for 40 yards, Cole Kmet three for 57, Keenan Allen three for 33 and D'Andre Swift broke another screen pass for 42 yards to set up a touchdown. Williams even found backup tight end Gerald Everett, who until Sunday had been used almost exclusively for catches that lose yardage. Everett had two receptions for 22 yards.
"We got DJ involved, we got everybody involved in the passing game, and so I think that's really good to be able to distribute that, play point guard, be able to do that," coach Matt Eberflus said. "Hard to defend that way."
Williams' 20-of-29 effort was good for a personal best 126.2 passer rating.
It seemed an unlikely day for this kind of passing. For one, the Panther's weak run defense made that the thing to attack, and the Bears did that well for 128 yards on 39 carries. The other reason was gusting wind from 7 to 20 mph at times.
"The wind today was weird because at certain times, it was blowing that way but the opposite side was this way," Williams said. "So multiple times after when we had TV timeouts or anything like that, I would spray the water bottle to figure out how aggressive the wind was and things like that. It definitely affected, like the first pass I threw.
"As soon as I was throwing it, I could feel the gust of wind and it just kind of took the ball when Keenan ran the speed-out. And Keenan did a good job kind of getting his hand away and batting it down because it ended up being behind him. It was different, things like that. I think cutting through the wind and things like that, I don't think I've had too many issues of dealing with that but it was definitely a factor of understanding the wind."
Not everything went the way Williams wanted. He scrambled once, got hit after he leaped and was hit beyond the white paint, at least a yard or more. No penalty flag came.
"Got hit in the air, thought it would be a flag," Williams said. "I think I was out of bounds for a good little bit. Didn't happen. Got up. Played football."
Williams didn't even ask about the flag.
"I just kept going, just kept trying to play football," he said. "Help the team go score. We did a good job keeping the ball in our hands."
It was a good place for it to be on this day.
