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Tucked into that fact is this—the Chicago Bears had a good enough team over the first month of the season to allow him the time to get there. In Week 1, it was a pick-six and a score on a blocked punt doing the job for Chicago. In dropping their next two games, the coaching staff never panicked or asked too much of its quarterback. Instead, Williams got to play, make his mistakes, and learn.
And Sunday, he was 20-of-29 for 304 yards, two touchdowns, and no picks as the Bears blew out the Carolina Panthers, 36–10.
“It’s just about us being able to have him grow every week,” coach Matt Eberflus told me during his commute home. “He’s learned about the game up here every single week. It’s the noise in Houston and taking that into Indianapolis and operating in the noise way better there. Being able to fit the ball into his skill [players], he did that also in Indy. Then, just worked every single week to get better. Then, just playing clean football.
“I think what he learned most was, . He said that last week, and I think he’s spot on.”
This is a different Bears team, for sure. Eberflus told me the turning point came this week last year—when Chicago won in Washington, 40–20, on a Thursday night in Week 5 to stem the tide of an 0–4 start. Since then, the Bears are 10–8, with three different quarterbacks (Justin Fields and Tyson Bagent) registering multiple wins as through that 18-game stretch.
So where usually being the first pick means going to an objectively bad team, Williams found a soft landing with a team in that draft slot via the Bryce Young trade of the year before. Which gave him the freedom, through the first regular-season month of his NFL career, to figure out what he could get away with, and what he couldn’t, in pro football, and also get his footing in operating the offense as prescribed.
“He’s done a really good job, especially the last couple of weeks with that, knowing that our defense is playing at a high level,” OC Shane Waldron told me Sunday night. “Our special teams are really good. That’s the complimentary football that we can play.”
And with that consistent growth, he positioned himself this week to look a little more like the Superman the Bears drafted him to be, even if they didn’t necessarily need that from him with Carolina in town.
The interesting thing, though, is how most of the progress was shown in the stuff he isn’t known for—operating on schedule and in rhythm within the offense. Both of his touchdown throws to DJ Moore were examples of it—downfield throws from the pocket, the first one a 34-yarder in the first quarter, and the second a 30-yarder in the second quarter.
• The 34-yarder was on second-and-6 less than 10 minutes into the game, with the Panthers bringing pressure, and Cole Kmet and D’Andre Swift picking up the blitz. What the coaches loved was how Williams calmly and quickly identified it, and then reacted to the job the tight end and back were doing in pass protection.
“That understanding of—” Waldron says. “That was one of those instances up front where the o-line and then those two guys in the blitz pickup did such a good job keeping a firm pocket. And DJ’s able to run away from the corner on that look on the crossing route on the deep cross.”
In other words, he recognized the rush was picked up, saw Moore running free underneath the three-deep coverage, and 34 yards later, the Bears tied the score at 7.
• The 30-yarder also highlighted a more patient Williams in the pocket. The difference with this one was how quickly he got to Moore in reading the coverage, with Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze, in Waldron’s words “1A and 1B” on the front side of Williams’s progression.
“The number one option’s to the right side unless the safety plays over the top, which he did,” Waldron says. “Caleb’s ability to instantly progress to the second part of the read and find DJ on the post for a touchdown based on the look, I thought those were really good feels, natural quarterback play, where he could feel everything that was happening and not having to go slowly through everything, but just feeling it happen in the moment, so he could progress quickly.”
And the throw itself was a dime.
Then, there were examples where Williams did the safe, smart thing. One was on a call that had go routes up each sideline, with Kmet running a crosser. Reading a backed-up defensive look, the quarterback prudently checked it down to Moore for a two-yard gain, which helped to position the offense for a 26-yard, Williams-to-Kmet chunk play on the next snap.
"Last week, had a couple of shot plays called where the coverage didn’t play out perfect or maybe there was an edge rush or something like that,” Waldron says. “He did a really good job of taking the check-downs. The flip side of that is you want to get the ball down the field. What he did a really good job of in this game was letting those plays naturally occur. When he did have a chance, they were in rhythm and in-the-pocket downfield throws.
“He was able to hang in there and the big plays came to him.”
The final result on Sunday was a 126.2 passer rating, his second consecutive triple-digit rating—which was significant to Eberflus—in that being over 100 in that category means a quarterback is playing clean, efficient football. And after those early bumps, Williams is.
That, in turn, has set the foundation, or floor, for a player with a sky-high ceiling.
“I told the guys after the game, and Caleb’s no different, that we have to learn from this game,” Eberfus says. “We can get better from every performance. It doesn’t matter if you win by three lose by seven or win by a wide margin. That doesn’t matter. We have to get better from this game right here."
Based on a month of evidence, it’s a good bet Williams is on a good track.
