CHICAGO (WGN) — I’ve seen enough. After two dominant wins and three straight overall, Caleb Williams’ confidence is where it needs to be, and he grasps enough of Shane Waldron’s scheme to do what many thought he would do from day 1 — pilot the Chicago Bears to the NFL playoffs — even though other ingredients already point toward them being ready to make the jump.
There’s no possible way I regret writing this in say, six weeks, right?
Those who know football know exactly what has plagued the Bears for nearly their entire existence — Finding someone competent enough to play quarterback.
There have been a dozen duds for every Sid Luckman, Jay Cutler, or one-hit wonder to play even slightly above average (Hello, 1995 Erik Kramer).
Cade McNown. Kordell Stewart. Chad Hutchinson. The list is endless.
Years of debilitating quarterback play shell-shocked Chicago fandom into believing every single one of their QBs was doomed to be waxed behind a patchwork offensive line, in a system where the offensive coordinator didn’t know his behind from a hole in the ground.
But I am here to say those days are over, no matter how much the decades of trauma whisper sweet nothings into the ears of fans saying Williams is just another mortal man who’s going to fizzle out under the curse of the Chicago quarterback.
I’m taking that line of thinking out back behind the station and doing it like George did Lennie in Of Mice and Men.
Caleb Williams is no ordinary quarterback and the culmination of his lifetime’s worth of work has begun to pay dividends at the professional level, as evidenced by his last two games of play.
By the numbers, Williams is 43 for 58 (74.1%) with 530 yards and six TD passes to one interception over the Bears’ last two contests — wins over the lowly Carolina Panthers (36-10) and Jacksonville Jaguars (35-16).
Teamwide, his performances underlined a Chicago offense that scored five offensive touchdowns in two straight games — the first time they achieved such a feat in back-to-back contests since the 1956 NFL season.
Suppose Williams were to turn in the same level of performance over his next two games, 500-plus yards through the air with six-plus TD passes. In that case, he’ll have exceeded Chicago’s rookie record for TD passes in a season in just four games alone (Charlie O’Rourke set the team rookie record with 11 back in 1942, per Courtney Cronin and ESPN Stats & Info).
If Williams were to maintain his passing yards per game mark from the Bears’ last two contests (265) over the rest of the year, he would become the first Chicago quarterback to eclipse 4,000 yards in a single season during the team’s final game of the year.
“I think the way that he’s prepared, going into it from Week 1 all the way into Week 6, he’s proven that he’s gotten better every single week, and we’ve gotten better as a football team,” said head coach Matt Eberflus Monday. “I think that we just need to keep doing that. In order to be good in this league, you have to be getting better every single week.”
I could list off the myriad of statistics and achievements anointing Williams as Chicago’s chosen one until I’m blue in the face, but what gives me the confidence to double down and put it all into writing isn’t only his improvement, but also an uptick in performance from the offensive line, the emergence of the run game and the existence of the Bears’ ever-stout defense.
As The Film Room’s Brett Kollmann puts it, Williams has taken steps forward, but so has Chicago’s offensive line. Over the first two weeks of the season, the Bears offensive line was 25th in the NFL in pressure percentage allowed, but across Weeks 3 through 6, Chicago was 13th in the league.
Followed up by the emergence of D’Andre Swift and Roschon Johnson, and Williams has the two best friends a rookie quarterback could ask for — a clean(er) pocket and a run game to keep the defense honest.
During Chicago’s 3-game winning streak, Swift has tallied 54 carries for 257 yards and three touchdowns in addition to hauling in all 13 of his targets for 147 receiving yards, while Johnson has settled into being the Bears’ short yardage thumper with 59 yards and three touchdowns on the ground.
If Swift were to match his per-game averages from his last three games for the rest of the season, the Georgia alum would finish in the ballpark of 1,267 rushing yards and 732 receiving yards, which would be the most total yards by a Chicago running back since the great Walter Payton in 1985.
I wonder what happened that year?
All things considered, Chicago’s offense is starting to look like a stop at J.P. Graziano’s to pick up one of their iconic Italian subs.
The offensive line is a perfectly toasted bread. Swift and Johnson are the lettuce and tomato. The wide receivers? The provolone, while Cole Kmet serves as the red wine vinegar and oregano, all of which sit atop Williams’ Capicola, salami and Mortadella.
Then once you’re ready to wash it all down, there sits a classic glass bottle of Coke (aka the Bears defense) to finish the job.
Through six games, Chicago is tied for fourth in the NFL in interceptions (7) and sixth in sacks (18), while giving up the league’s fifth-fewest points per game (16.8).
The Bears have made the playoffs six times since the turn of the millennia. Five of those teams (2001, 2005, 2006, 2010 and 2018) had a top-five scoring defense paired with a run game that featured a back with over 1,000 total yards of offense.
But none of those teams had a quarterback like Caleb Williams.
