Eight games into the season, Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams is one of the best in football.
Statistically, the eye test, the win column — a Bears quarterback is among the league’s elite for the first time since the 1940s.
Williams, along with the rest of the offense, passed a meaningful test Monday night in the 34-17 win in Seattle. Coach Ben Johnson said it best afterward: the Bears “didn’t come here to take a statement. We came here to build something.”
But the rest of the league is on notice. Everyone saw what the Bears did to the Seahawks, and they saw a quarterback undaunted by the noise or the ferocity of Seattle’s front. They saw a quarterback who, on the opening drive, authored a 17-play touchdown drive with poise. They saw a quarterback escape a would-be sack by defensive tackle Leonard Williams and turn it into a 22-yard throw to Rome Odunze in the third quarter.
“I thought Caleb did a great job just throughout the game, certainly on that first drive,” Johnson said. “But he took care of the football and I thought he did a lot of really good things throughout.”
Bears hand Seahawks 3rd loss in 4 games
Johnson said he put together “one of the more elaborate game plans” in terms of what he asked Williams to do. The result was a 24-for-34 performance with one touchdown and no turnovers. He’s the only quarterback to pass for more than 200 yards against the Seahawks this season.
“He stayed calm, cool and collected throughout,” Johnson said. “I think there are times where it can get a little bit chaotic, and yet he didn’t allow that to faze him at all.”
Williams’ unwavering quality was on display in the Bears’ response to Seattle’s comeback. The atmosphere shifted in the stadium after tight end Colston Loveland’s fumble and the Seahawks making it a 3-point game. The Bears were behind the sticks after running back D’Andre Swift went down for a loss on the first play.
Then, on second-and-11, Williams calmly hit Loveland on a slant for a 12-yard gain. First down. Except for the drives at the end of the half and the end of the game, every time the Bears got a first down, they scored.
A few plays later, after a delay-of-game penalty set up a third-and-9 from the Seahawks’ 44-yard line, Williams fired it sideways to receiver Kalif Raymond — on time and on target — and Raymond burst free for a 39-yard gain to set up Swift’s touchdown run.
“That’s who we are,” Williams said. “We don’t waver and believe in that. We know who we are. Things are going to go bad. It’s an emotional game. It’s football. Things happen. It’s 11 people on the field on offense, 11 on defense. There’s a lot that can go wrong, and so when things do go wrong, it’s staying steady. It’s not overreacting,”
Williams said that was his message after the Bears’ 31-7 loss to the Green Bay Packers: “The reaction is the most important thing.” The Bears have had several clutch drives this season that quelled an opponent’s comeback hopes.
Since returning from his hamstring injury, Williams has been dialed in. He’s been accurate. He’s making big plays on third down. The Bears are 3-0. Even when including Williams’ whole season, with a 3-point output against Minnesota, he ranks among the league’s best in several key passing categories.
| Stat | Total | Rank |
|---|---|---|
Comp. % | 70.9 | 2nd |
YPA | 8 | 5th |
Rating | 104.6 | 5th |
EPA/Att | 0.27 | 7th |
EPA/drpbk | 0.21 | 6th |
EPA vs 4 | 0.31 | 2nd |
INT | 1 | t-2nd |
From Week 6 to Week 8, Williams’ numbers are gaudy. He’s completing 73.8 percent of his passes and has a passer rating of 111.3.
On throws that have traveled at least 20 yards in the air, Williams is 8-for-13 for 209 yards, good for a 131.1 passer rating and an expected points added per pass of 0.94.
Against the Atlanta Falcons, Williams worked the short to intermediate part of the field. Against the New England Patriots, he threw for more explosives than any other Bears QB has in a game this century. In Seattle, he did a little of both, and his return has also made a massive difference in the red zone.
In Week 2 against the Vikings, the Bears were 0-for-3 in the red zone, with one of those trips on the drive Williams left with his injured hamstring and another coming afterward. In the next three games, the offense scored touchdowns on only 5 of 14 red-zone drives.
Against the Falcons, Patriots and Seahawks, the Bears are 11-for-13 scoring touchdowns in the red zone.
Johnson said he observed Williams staying after Saturday afternoon’s red zone practice working with quarterbacks coach J.T. Barrett for an extra hour.
“We got a ton of confidence in him,” Johnson said. “I know if things don’t look great necessarily early on in the week, I trust him at this point to get it down by the time we get to game day. That’s a credit to his approach right now. It’s awesome. He does a phenomenal job working.
“That’s just kind of where he is right now as a player. He loves downloading all this and bringing it to life on game day. I think he’s played really well through these last three games.”
After the game, Williams singled out one play — a completion that could’ve been more precise, a sign of him spending a lot of time around Johnson, who is always striving for perfection.
“I need to keep finding ways to get better,” he said. “I need to keep finding ways to deliver a better ball. There’s one dagger route that I threw to Rome that he had to slide for, and he could have possibly ran and got more.”
Johnson and Williams often emphasize giving the receivers a “runner’s ball.” It’s one area where Williams has greatly improved this season, but he wants more.
Sunday night he’ll see a Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense that just shut out the Falcons and previously shut down the Carolina Panthers. Coach Todd Bowles will surely throw some unique looks at Williams, but the already confident quarterback is playing at the highest level of his NFL career.
“I want to be at my best for these guys,” he said after Monday’s game. “I want to be my best for Chicago, the organization, my teammates. … The more that I can do to be able to help this team, I’m going to spend extra time, extra hours, extra walk-throughs, extra just mental time to be able to have all the checks, have all the at-the-line stuff, these funky formations and all these different things to make it seem super complex for the defense and play in a loud place and having all the new checks and all these different things just to have this feeling at the end of it.
“There’s nothing like it.”
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