CHICAGO — For 5 minutes and 41 seconds on Monday night, the Chicago Bears were fixed.
The Ben Johnson hype was real. The Caleb Williams improvement was happening before our eyes.
On a 10-play, 61-yard drive that took 5:41 off the clock, Williams completed 6 of 6 passes, then ran for a 9-yard touchdown to put the Bears up by seven.
In 5 minutes and 41 seconds, Williams — whose head coach wants him to complete 70 percent of his passes this season — was perfect. In fact, he completed his next four throws, too, becoming the first Bears quarterback since at least 1978 to start a season with a streak of 10 completions.
By the time things unraveled, with Williams airmailing receivers and the energy sapped from Soldier Field, that opening drive might as well have taken place a decade ago.
“(Williams) started off really well. … It certainly felt like it dried up a little bit,” Johnson said after the Bears’ 27-24 loss to the Minnesota Vikings. “Probably a credit to (Brian) Flores and the Vikings as well, made some adjustments on their end because things tightened up as well.”
At halftime, Williams was 13-for-16 passing, a completion percentage of 81.2. In the second half, he completed 8 of 19 passes (42.1 percent). His EPA (expected points added) per dropback — a statistic that Johnson values because of its correlation to wins — was -0.18, per TruMedia.
That 42.1 percent second-half mark ranked 28th in the league for Week 1. A lot of things were out of sorts on offense after halftime, possibly all feeding into Williams’ lack of precision.
“It starts with getting in and out of the huddle, and being able to complete some easy passes, checkdowns, things like that, keep the drives going,” Williams said. “We did that in the beginning. … I think a few balls got batted, we had penalties, that slowed the momentum down that we had. We’ve got to do better with those.”
One of the three misses in the first half seemed an aberration but turned into a harbinger.
Johnson decided to show his aggressiveness in the second quarter by going for it on fourth-and-3 from the Vikings’ 24-yard line. Williams had receiver DJ Moore open over the middle of the field. The pass whistled past Moore.
A similar situation happened in the third quarter, on the Bears’ only other productive drive before a late touchdown, when Williams sailed one too far in front of tight end Cole Kmet.
“Those are big moments in the game,” he said. “Both times we were either high red zone or in the red zone. Just missed right in front of them, just a bit outside. Or inside. Frustrating. Something that you practiced and you hit throughout the whole week. Move the ‘backer, whipped it in there, just missed.”
According to TruMedia, Williams was blitzed on 30 percent of his drop-backs in the first half and then 43.5 percent after halftime. That uptick may have played a role. The game flow, too, didn’t help. The drive that ended with a missed field goal by Cairo Santos was deflating, especially after the Vikings responded with a touchdown.
In the fourth quarter, Williams threw back-to-back passes too high for the intended receiver — one was for Rome Odunze, the next Kmet. Trailing by 10 points, Williams connected with Kmet for a 31-yard gain — a one-handed catch by Kmet. As they rushed to the line, Williams had Moore streaking to the end zone down the left sideline and once again made an errant throw.
Caleb Williams and the Bears were rolling early in Monday night’s game, but the wheels came off in the second half. (Matt Marton / Imagn Images)
Maybe Williams was trying to do too much, adding unnecessary velocity to his throws. Maybe the moment, one that has been so anticipated since Johnson became head coach in January, got too big and affected his fundamentals as the game tightened up.
False starts, a holding penalty, a run game that wasn’t productive enough — none of that had to help, either. Replicating the opening drive over and over isn’t realistic, but the Bears didn’t come close.
When asked about the 70 percent goal last week, offensive coordinator Declan Doyle explained what Williams can do to achieve it.
“The biggest thing is, pass game efficiency is about taking what’s there, and obviously just working through his reads,” he said. “The biggest thing on every given play, he’s got a place to start and he’s gonna have outlets and answers that he needs to find later in the play. And that’s really how that number goes up is when guys are playing through 1 and 2 and they’re able to find 3 and 4, find the back, whatever that may be. But really that’s kind of the goal — it’s process-related, it’s talking him through each of these plays and where that ball might need to go if the primary isn’t open.”
That happened early on. We saw Williams go from read to read and then find a good chunk of yards over the middle, or swing it to the outlet in the flat if nothing was open down the field. It’s not so much that he didn’t do that later on, it’s that he totally misfired.
The game ended with Williams at an accuracy rate of 60 percent. In his 18 NFL starts, that ranks 11th, even though he gave himself quite the head start, with a new coach and play caller who is prioritizing accuracy.
Last season, when the Bears offense was inept to start games — it didn’t have a touchdown on an opening drive all season and scored only 27 points in the first quarter in 17 games — Williams completed 61.1 percent of his passes in the first quarter, ranked 30th in the league.
On Monday night, he was 9-for-9. By the end of the game, the conversations centered on how inaccurate he was. Meanwhile, Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy was 6-for-8 passing in the fourth quarter, including two touchdown passes. He and coach Kevin O’Connell were celebrating. Williams and Johnson were left wondering what went wrong.
The Bears have a short week to figure it out ahead of a road trip to face a Lions team that figures to be plenty motivated after a drubbing in Green Bay.
Is the first half a better indicator of the Bears’ quarterback, or the second? He’s ultimately somewhere in between, but the Bears can’t have their quarterback struggling to even give his receivers a chance. He knows it. Johnson knows it. Now we get to see the duo’s first attempt to fix it and to see if they can sustain it.
“It’s frustrating,” Williams said. “Something I’ll be better with, something that you have to hit in those moments.”
(Top photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
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