Bear Digest

Can Bears Supporting Coaching Cast Give Caleb Williams a Chance?

How Shane Waldron and his assistants handle Caleb Williams will be critical in his development, and here's how their experience rates compared with staffs of other rookie QBs.

Gene Chamberlain

Shane Waldron, right, and Caleb Williams have barely begun to get acquainted as the Bears' QB development team gets to work.
Shane Waldron, right, and Caleb Williams have barely begun to get acquainted as the Bears' QB development team gets to work. / David Banks Photo | USA TODAY

There is the popular narrative about how the Bears flopped at trying to develop their last two first-round quarterbacks, Justin Fields and Mitchell Trubisky.

Then there is the great fear they're about to do the same with a group of relatively inexperienced assistant coaches under offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, who hasn't exactly had experience developing QBs at the root level in the NFL.

Fields and Trubisky had varying degrees of supporting experience with coaching staffs, but both lacked necessary offensive talent support in various ways.

What is definitely true is Trubisky never left Chicago and suddenly had his talent start showing through to the point where he started playing much better in another system when given a chance. He has more interceptions than TD passes, a far worse quarterback rating and much lower yards per pass attempt since leaving. Meanwhile, his completion percentage has been about the same.

Time will tell with Fields, who brought the Bears back only a conditional sixth-round pick in the trade with Pittsburgh.

The important aspect of all this is how it pertains to the new quarterback, Caleb Williams.

Can the Bears get this one right? Do they have the right plan and supporting staff?

For comparison's sake, they've got more experience on the staff at working with quarterbacks than C.J. Stroud had on the staff of offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik.

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It's obvious GM Ryan Poles surrounded Williams with necessary talent. No quarterback drafted first overall ever came to a team with three wide receivers the caliber of DJ Moore, Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze, and with tight ends and backs who can help in the passing game.

The question is whether he has the supporting coaching staff to succeed.

Team Williams

Waldron has three years experience at his job, which is more than most new OCs will have. 

"For me, also being able to lean on (QB coach) Kerry Joseph and the rest of the offensive staff, to me this is always a collaborative effort and it's going to take all of us to help him along the way and everyone has great individual strengths that they can bring to the table," Waldron said. "So for me, it's helping him with the big picture of the game, understanding the offense, understanding situational football and then Kerry being a great technician and making sure we're always working on the fundamentals and that belief in the basics.

"And then Thomas with the passing game and everything he can bring there and his prior experiences to lean on. So it's a collaborative effort, we'll all work at it together."

Waldron never really developed Jared Goff with the Rams. That happened when he was coaching other positions. But he does great credit for turning around the career of an older QB, Seattle's Geno Smith.

Joseph, a CFL QB with two years experience as an assistant quarterback coach, calls Waldon the right kind of coordinator to lead this development project because of his adaptability.

"He's been around different quarterbacks," Joseph said. "Shane has been around Goff. Even before the Rams, he's been around other quarterbacks. And then he comes to Seattle, he has  Russell Wilson, then he has Geno Smith, Drew Lock.

"So he's been able to adjust to the guys on the field and I think that’s very important."

The ability to adapt as a coach is one thing coach Matt Eberflus stressed when looking for a coordinator.

"That's what coaching is about and that's one thing that I love about working with Shane, because I'm an extension of him, of getting that information into that quarterback room," Joseph said.

Experience with a No. 1

Passing game coordinator Thomas Brown has one year experience as an offensive coordinator last year in Carolina, working with the No. 1 pick in the draft, Bryce Young. Prior to that, he worked on the Rams staff with Waldron but never was a quarterbacks guru. His expertise was with running backs.

The experience with Young last year is being counted on heavily in his work with Williams.

"We talked about the experience last year, being able to deal with the No. 1 overall draft pick but also a rookie and some of the highs and lows about that," Brown said. "But also, just my familiarity working with Shane, being with him in LA before in 2020.

"To bring that prior knowledge, plus my own kinda spin of things as far as the attention and process of it, be more behind the scenes, letting he and Kerry kinda take charge."

Brown also had a little past experience with Williams himself. He recruited former USC running back MarShawn Lloyd while coaching at South Carolina.

"I think Caleb was a freshman or a sophomore (in high school)," Brown said. "I was at DeMatha recruiting MarShawn and someone mentioned a quarterback’s doing pretty good at a school down the road (Gonzaga).

"I hopped in my car and drove over and just laid eyes on him for a quick second, knowing I probably wouldn't have a shot down the road because I was planning on moving on from college football before he graduated from high school."

Throwing Numbers at the Problem

It's not just those three coaches involved with Williams, either.

They have offensive assistant/quarterbacks and receivers coaches Ryan Griffin and Robbie Picazo. Both have the same title. Griffin hasn't coached before and was still under contract as a quarterback for the Skorpions Varese of the Italian Football League.

Picazo came with Waldron from the Seahawks, where he had been one year after coaching for a year with Houston. In neither place was Picazo a quarterbacks coach, but he has coaching experience in college back to 2013 working with quarterbacks, running backs and receivers.

By Comparison

The group assembled by the Bears is not the most inexperienced to support a rookie quarterback. Nor is it the most experienced.

In fact, among the six QBs drafted in the top 12 this year, it might be the third most experienced in terms of dealing specifically with quarterbacks.

  • In Washington, defensive-side head coach Dan Quinn has Kliff Kingsbury as offensive coordinator and as a former head coach in the NFL and at Texas Tech to work with Jared Daniels. Kingsbury's experience with QBs can't be questioned. It's a good thing he is so experienced because he's backed by Tavita Pritchard as quarterback coach and he hasn't done this before in the NFL. Also, his assistant quarterbacks coach is David Blough, who has been an NFL backup and not coaching until now. Passing game coordinator Brian Johnson was a quarterbacks coach two years with the Eagles and an offensive coordinator in the past both in college and the NFL for one year in Philadelphia.
  • New England defensive-side head coach Jerod Mayo has Alex Van Pelt as offensive coordinator. He has been an offensive coordinator and QB coach for the Browns, a QB coach with the Packers and Buccaneers and Buffalo. Their QB coach is Tim McCartney, who has one year of QB coaching experience with Denver in 2019. Also, they have former Giants head coach Ben McAdoo, who has been an offensive coordinator with Carolina and quarterbacks coach with Jacksonville.
  • Atlanta QB Michael Penix Jr. has the advantage of watching while Kirk Cousins plays, but he's not supposed to develop immediately. Head coach Raheem Morris has been a head coach before but has more of a defensive background than offensive. His offensive coordinator is Zac Robinson, the former passing game coordinator and assistant QB coach with the Rams who is getting his first chance as an OC. QB coach is TJ Yates, the former NFL backup who was an assistant quarterbacks coach with Houston in 2020. One big asset they have is veteran offensive coach Ken Zampese, who has been with numerous teams and helped with QB developement.
  • Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell hasn't developed a quarterback yet, either, although he is a former offensive coordinator and that helps when dealing with J.J. McCarthy. His OC, Wes Phillips, has been with the team since 2022 and has plenty of time to focus on QB development because O'Connell's expertise is in play calling. Their quarterback coach is inexperienced Josh McCown, who was a Panthers assistant last year but has plenty of experience as a player. They also have an assistant quarterback coach in Grant Udinski and passing game coordinator Brian Angelichio on a staff very well supported for a young player.
  • Denver has the most experience, although it's debatable whether they've actually succesfully developed any QB since Drew Brees almost two decades ago. Sean Payton was said to be a QB whisperer in New Orleans but it was mainly because he had Brees. He hasn't had success with Russell Wilson, that's for sure. Also on their staff is Joe Lombardi as offensive coordinator, a long-time assistant and coordinator for Payton. The quarterbacks coach, Davis Webb, is lacking much experience with only last year on the job. Passing game coordinator John Morton has more background as a receiver scoach. However, they have the experience of Pete Carmichael on staf as a senior offensive assistant after spending 14 years with the Saints as a coordinator and QB coach.

The bottom line will be how Waldron leads this group of relatively inexperienced assistants and whether Williams pays enough attention to fundamentals to make it all work.

"I think for me, the things we’re pouring into him right now is just the understanding of the big picture of the game and all the intricacies and the nuances of, first of all, between college and the NFL and being able to start with that ground floor approach and build that repertoire of his up as we’re going," Waldron said.

It's going to be a process and they've barely begun.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.