What Caleb Williams Discovered Amid the Vikings’ Blitz Storm Could Change How Chicago Sees Its Young QB. DH

Bears coach Ben Johnson couldn’t get too discouraged by his passer’s low completion percentage Sunday mainly because of what he was up against.
When Sunday’s game ended, Bears coach Ben Johnson deferred judgment on the efforts of quarterback Caleb Williams until getting a better grasp on it by seeing film.

It’s an ancient coaching refrain, to wait until they look at the tape, but in this case it really was necessary because Williams was blitzed about two-thirds of plays. This was abnormal even by Minnesota Vikings standards and complicated the evaluation process.

As a result, the Bears dialed back some expectations to the point where their coach was praising his QB’s incompletions.

“The best thing he did was he kept the ball out of harm’s way,” Johnson said Monday. “He did a great job protecting that football.

“I can’t say enough good things about their defense in terms of how they create turnovers. All these forced fumbles, it’s by design. It’s very deliberate by them. I thought our whole crew did a great job taking care of that football. And then Caleb in particular did a good job throwing the ball away when things weren’t present. That was good to see.”

Conservatism prevails

Williams has thrown only four interceptions this season. While he has completed only 56 of 102 in the three-game winning streak for 697 yards, he hasn’t thrown an interception in those.

The lack of interceptions is nothing new for Williams, who has had 19 games in his first two seasons without throwing one. Only three passers in history have more: Dak Prescott (22), C.J. Stroud (21) and Trevor Lawrence (20). But Williams still has seven games to pass all of those marks.

The completion percentage, at 16 of 32, was lowered somewhat by three drops and by throwaways.

The blitzes, then, forced changes in targets.

“We had a couple opportunities there to really get some big plays potentially down the field,” Johnson said. “We didn’t capitalize on those. Those are a couple that you’d like to have back. But all in all I thought that he played a pretty solid football game.”

One of those deeps was an overthrow of Rome Odunze on a go route on the second throw.

“The interesting thing was not just the (blitz) percentage, because it was completely different than Week 1,” Johnson said about Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores’ scheme. “You know, kind of like we alluded about, but also the type of pressures that he was bringing was a lot of corner cat (cornerbacks), which he hadn’t shown a ton of.

“So I thought we recognized it fairly early, and we did the best we could as a staff and as players to make our adjustments to it.”

Return of Cole Kmet

Some of the adjustments made meant Williams finding a long-lost target, Cole Kmet.

Although he averaged only 9 yards a catch, Kmet had a season-high five receptions and delivered punishment to tacklers on a few of his recptions.

“We came into this game wanting to be very completion-driven and yet when you look at the stat sheet we weren’t as high completion percentages as we would like to be or as efficient, and I think there’s a number of reasons for that but I do think that was him getting quickly to Cole was what we wanted to see this game,” Johnson said. “That was by design. I thought he had one early on where you know we got some play actions going on down the field type throw and it’s not there and he’s quick to throw him a good runner’s ball on the sideline happened to be on the Viking’ sideline he caught it and he turned it into a 6-, 7-yard gain but ball location is paramount when he does that.

“A couple of those hurry up plays, it’s same thing, they’re bringing those corner pressures, so they’re leaving the flats unattended to and he’s recognizing that quickly and getting the ball out and allowing Cole to run with it. I thought Cole played one of his best games he has so far this year.”

In all, it’s Williams and the offense growing through a unique assignment,  one they’re unlikely to face again this season.

According to Pro Football Reference and Stathead, Flores was only blitzing 37.6% coming into the game so two-thirds was pretty extreme even for him.

All told, Williams learned a good lesson in patience. It’s never something to undervalue for a young passer.