‘Frustrating’ outing from Caleb Williams overshadows what little positive strides he made in his first game under Ben Johnson
He’s got to be better.
A lot of hype surrounded Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams and his new head coach Ben Johnson going into the regular season opener against the Minnesota Vikings.
After spending all offseason building a relationship and trust factor together, many fans were eager to see what this new partnership would look like and how Williams would evolve in Year 2 as the Bears’ starting quarterback.
If you turned the game off after the opening drive of the game on “Monday Night Football” you’d be overly optimistic. For those who watched all four quarters, concern is a rational feeling.
Going into the game, Johnson made it known he didn’t want to put too much on the shoulders of his young quarterback going up against a top defensive unit. Prior to kickoff, Williams understood he needed to be more point guard and less Superman.
By the end of the game, Williams was trying to be more Superman and less point guard and seemingly was trying to do too much for what the defense was actually giving him.
At the start of the game, the Williams-Johnson partnership looked great. Williams started the opening drive 6-6 with an impressive throw on the run to wide receiver Rome Odunze and capped the drive off with a nine-yard touchdown run. Williams added four more consecutive completions and some nifty scrambling before things started to unravel.
“(Williams) started off really well… It certainly felt like it dried up a little bit,” Johnson said after the game. “Probably a credit to Flores and the Vikings as well, made some adjustments on their end because things tightened up as well.”
It was encouraging to see Williams work through progressions and actually hit his check downs early in the game, but as the coverage tightened up, Williams stopped trusting his reads and was relying too heavily on those check downs. When he did trust the read and fire, the ball came out inaccurate and completely missed his intended target.
The most egregious miss came on fourth-and-three in the second quarter. Williams could have had wide receiver DJ Moore open over the middle but sent a fastball just out of Moore’s reach. Another missed throw in the third quarter was sailed over the head of tight end Cole Kmet.
“Those are big moments in the game,” Williams explained. “Both times we were either high red zone or in the red zone. Just missed right in front of them, just a bit outside. Or inside. Frustrating. Something that you practiced and you hit throughout the whole week. Move the ‘backer, whipped it in there, just missed.”
The misses continued into the fourth quarter after the Vikings rallied back to take the lead. Down 10 points needing to score quick and preserve time, Williams got a drive started with a deep shot down the seam to Kmet, and this time was able to complete the pass thanks to an insane grab by Kmet.
On the following play, Johnson had a killer play-design that sent Moore deep down the sideline after working from the slot. Moore was wide open for a would-be touchdown, but the ball again sailed way over the head of its intended target. Williams followed it up with two more incomplete passes.
“It’s frustrating,” Williams added. “Something I’ll be better with, something that you have to hit in those moments.”
Williams eventually got the team into the endzone finding Odunze for an easy touchdown, but it was too little, too late. The Bears still trailed by three with just over two minutes remaining and got the ball back with a measly nine seconds remaining.
Overall, Williams showed growth in one area in his first game under Ben Johnson. He hit the easy completions and avoided the negative plays (outside of one intentional grounding). Finding and hitting the check downs was a big thing the staff wanted to see out of Williams compared to how he operated during his rookie season.
The downside is that Williams is still struggling to see his reads actually open up before abandoning the progression and looking straight for those check downs. As Troy Aikman noted multiple times on the broadcast, Williams had guys open, he just didn’t see them. And when he did, he fired an inaccurate ball more often than not.
That’s not an encouraging sign from Williams. But, it’s the first game of the season. Johnson, offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, and the rest of the offensive staff will look back at some of these mistakes with Williams and actually coach him up on what to do next time.
That’s the good news, and something Williams didn’t have to help him learn from these mistakes last season. We’ll see what improvements will be made going forward when the Bears take on the Detroit Lions on Sunday.
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