The story around the Chicago Bears this offseason, at least on the field, has involved the further development of quarterback Caleb Williams under the tutelage of head coach Ben Johnson going into Year 2 together.

Williams, with another jump in his performance, is knocking on the door of the MVP conversation and establishing himself as the face of the NFL. I mean he’s already the face of the video game version after just two seasons.

As training camp looms later this month, improving Williams’ bottom-of-the-league completion percentage remains a top priority. In a recent interview on the Pardon My Take podcast, Williams discussed his biggest flaw and also some of the misconceptions surrounding that issue.

Chicago Bears QB Caleb Williams discusses completion percentage flaw going into 2026

Last season, Williams’ completion percentage of 58.1 ranked 32nd among 32 quarterbacks with 250+ pass attempts. On top of that, Williams also led the NFL with 44 throw aways with the second slowest time to throw (3.23) among quarterbacks with 250+ drop backs. Those are concerning numbers on paper, but Williams explained more about the context those numbers actually represent.

“I throw the ball away the most to try and keep us in advantageous positions because I know coach will go for it on fourth down,” Williams explained. “So, I’m not fearful of only having three downs. I also know our ability and how explosive we are, so I’m not fearful of, like I said, throwing out of bounds, dirting it. . .

I obviously scramble and people count my scramble seconds of holding the ball, but it’s a bunch of different things that I can go into that I know that people speak about. Stats aren’t always something that you should look at. You should look at how they win games.”

Williams’ explanation is rational. When it came to making crunch time plays to win a game, few quarterbacks played at the level he did. At the same time, Williams understands this is an easy area for him to improve at even if it’s not a simple fix as many make it out to seem.

“Obviously I want to get that up, get the completion percentage up, but some of the things that I do on the field, it negatively impacts that,” Williams added. “But we’ll get it up this year just to shut everybody up and help everybody to understand.”

Chasing greatness or chasing perfection?

The biggest advocate of improving Williams’ completion percentage is Ben Johnson. Johnson’s offense is dependent on getting the ball into the hands of his play-makers as accurately as possible to allow those weapons to create more yards after the catch.

In Detroit, quarterback Jared Goff was exceptional at that and it helped Johnson’s offense become one of the highest scoring and most efficient units in NFL history. Johnson believes Williams can get to that point and put a high bar on the table with the 70 percent number as the goal. Which is a measurable also in need of some context.

“I’ve looked up all the greatest guys, from Peyton (Manning) to Tom (Brady) to Patrick (Mahomes), all these different guys. On average, most of them are 65 to 63 completion, 62 completion, which is surprising,” Williams said. “At least to me it was surprising, because it was only two percent off, three percent off. So, we’ll get it up. We’ll make everybody’s heart feel warm and lovely, and it’ll also help us in the long run of winning games. Starting games better, starting games faster, doing all of those things.”

To add some more context into it, let’s look at a few different quarterbacks from different eras of offenses to see how rare a 70 percent completion mark really is.

Player	Career Comp Pct	Best Single-Season Comp Pct	Worst Single-Season Comp Pct
Patrick Mahomes	66.2	67.5 (2024)	62.7 (2025)
Jared Goff	65.8	72.4 (2024)	54.6 (2016, rookie)
Aaron Rodgers	65.1	70.7 (2020, MVP)	60.7 (2015)
Tom Brady	64.3	68.9 (2007, MVP)	60.2 (2003)
Peyton Manning	65.3	68.8 (2009, MVP)	56.7 (1998, rookie)

What Johnson is asking for isn’t impossible, but it’s highly unlikely. The best single-season mark Rodgers, Brady, and Manning had was MVP-worthy seasons and three of the best QB seasons in NFL history. Goff’s highest mark happened to be his final season in Johnson’s offense.

For Williams to get to that point, it’s going to take a lot of improvement in a short amount of time while fundamentally changing the way he plays football. The question is whether or not Johnson can raise that mark and get the kind of quarterback he wants while not limiting what makes Williams great in the process.

That’s the challenge the two will face going into training camp and into the 2026 season. If they can do it, Williams will be in line for an MVP-worthy season of his own.