Bear Digest

How Caleb Williams' Performance Looks More Like the Real Deal

Sustained success this early in Caleb Williams' career regardless of opponent is something the Bears haven't seen from rookie passers.

Gene Chamberlain

An emotional Caleb Williams is charged up leaving the field in London after Sunday's 35-16 win over the Jaguars.
An emotional Caleb Williams is charged up leaving the field in London after Sunday's 35-16 win over the Jaguars. / Peter van den Berg-Imagn Images
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The game Caleb Williams played Sunday against Jacksonville in London is drawing rave reviews even if it did come against a Jaguars secondary that has given up a league-high 14 touchdown passes.

And their only interception made this season came Sunday against Williams. The reason for a surge forward in Williams support is the improvement in accuracy and how he's improving weekly at reading  defenses and attacking.

"I think the way he's prepared going into it, from Week 1 all the way to Week 6, he's proven that he's gotten better every single week," coach Matt Eberflus said Monday. "We`ve gotten better as a football team. So I think we're going to just keep trying to do that."

It's true Williams and the Bears offense fattened up their statistics at the expense of the Jaguars who are 32nd against the pass and last in the NFL. They did it against the Panthers, who are 29th on defense and have allowed more TD passes than all but four other teams (12). And they beat a Rams team ranked 29th in points allowed, giving up more net passing yards per attempt than any team in the league.

On the other hand, until the light started to shine through against the Colts with two touchdown passes thrown, Williams and the offense looked entirely incapable of passing against any defense regardless of NFL rank. So their success has been great against weaker teams and this puts them more in the middle of the pack regardless of the success.

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Best 4-Week Stretch

QB

Att/Comp

Pct.

Yards

TDs

Int

Rating

Y/Att

Caleb Williams 2024

133/93

69.9%

1,050

9

3

106.4

7.9

Justin Fields** 2023

96/60

62.5%

774

9

3

106.0

8.0

Mitchell Trubisky* 2018

136/83

61.0%

1,223

13

3

113.1

9.0

*Second year **Third year

Anyone who has seen the Bears offense since the 2018 season needs to be excited about what they're seeing, however. The ability to put up four touchdown passes in one game is not to be taken lightly. Neither is his overall accuracy and ability to get the ball downfield shown throughout the stretch.

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Williams needs three TD passes to set the franchise rookie TD passes record. He has nine so far. He is on track for a 3,700-yard season. With a few more big games, he might even be on pace to challenge 4,000 yards and this is something no Bears QB has done. If he sustains the pace of yardage in his last four games of 262 yards, he'd hit the 4,000-yard barrier in the season finale.

In the past four games, Williams is completing 69.9% which is winning quarterback play in any league against any team. He is 93 of 133 for 1,050 yards or 7.9 yards per attempt. The better quarterbacks are at 7.5 or higher, even to the vicinity of 8.0. He's averaging 262 yards a game in that stretch.

Williams has a 106.4 passer rating in that stretch.

The closest thing the Bears have seen to this type of passing over a four-game stretch from a quarterback recently was in 2018 early when Matt Nagy thought he had something in Mitchell Trubisky. Starting with a game against Tampa Bay when Trubisky did everything right, he completed 83 of 136 for 1,223 yards with 13 TDs and three interceptions. That was a passer rating of 113.08.  However, he only completed 61%.

Also, it wasn't like Trubisky was a rookie who was building up to this. 

It was his second season and occurred out of the clear blue after a few bad games. He threw down this breakout type of effort against Tampa Bay and after the four-game stretch receeded into a more mediocre state.

Justin Fields had four-week outbursts in both his second and third seasons but never sustained it and never had close to the passing yards Williams' four-week stretch included.

The factors stirring excitement for Williams are his rookie status, how he has always had the arm for this without question, and more than anything else how he has improved each week, almost, it seems, with each pass.

The other positive is how Williams did all of this and one of the things he did Sunday after the game was complain about his interception. He's not satisfied with the effort despite the positive trend upward.

"Yeah I was a bit pissed off at myself just cause those are passes I don't miss that you don't wnat to miss and do something like that," Williams said. "And so, yeah I was a bit pissed off after that and I think resetting myself was important but still having that in the back of my mind like not having that happen again and let's go out here and push forward."

He has shown nothing but improvement based on an attitude of trying to improve, all while the Bears improve within their new offense.

The arrows are up and it hasn't been this way in Chicago regarding the offense and a rookie quarterback in a long time, possibly never.

Twitter: BearsOnSI

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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.