The Bears offense jumps into action, racing to repair what many consider their greatest weakness. DH

The biggest problem evident Friday, and probably for several weeks, was the object of coach Ben Johnson’s focus when the Bears began preparing for the Packers.

Ben Johnson went right to the heart of the matter when the Bears arrived Monday for work.

They went to work on the passing game—it’s not very good.

Johnson isn’t pinning blame all on quarterback Caleb Williams or all of it on the receivers, or even on the play-calling and coaching aspect. He’s giving everyone blame.

“Everybody’s got a role to play to get this pass game cleaned up,” Johnson said. “We’re winning in spite of our passing game, not because of it, and none of us are pleased with that right now.”

The meeting drew a positive response from the offense.

“I thought we had a good meeting about it today and I think what coach does a really good job is he starts the meeting off by showing three or four plays from the past four weeks that he feels like he gave us a bad play call on,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “So he’s putting accountability on himself there and then from there he’s showing each and every one of us there’s always an example of one of us, whether it’s a receiver, tight end, running back, within the pass game where we need to be better in our route precision and things like that.

“And then obviously Caleb had areas where he feels like he can be better. So it’s definitely a collective effort and we keep addressing issues. Ben keeps bringing up the issues and I think guys take the coaching really well. So it’s just gonna be on coming to the practice field tomorrow (Tuesday) and trying to shore up those things that we can with the limited reps that we have at this moment, but kind of continue to address those things and face those things head on is the only real way that you’re going to get it fixed.”

All hands on deck

hnson again prefaced any talk about the passing struggle in Philadelphia with the strong wind limiting the efforts of both Williams and Eagles QB Jalen Hurts.

“But there’s a number of them that we’ve been talking about where we’ve got to fundamentally be correct,” Johnson said. “The primary receiver, when he’s open, we’ve got to make sure we hit him. And then all of our pass catchers, we just harped on it today, we need to be more disciplined in our route detail. It’s not where it needs to be. Our depth’s not proper all the time. Our steps aren’t.”

As for Williams, four throws in particular stood out about his performance. One was plain-as-daylight awful. That was his screen pass for an interception. One was missing Olamide Zaccheaus on the bootleg pass in the back of the end zone. One was underthrowing Rome Odunze open at the goal line on a comeback route. The last was his touchdown pass to Cole Kmet.

Throwing to Zaccheaus is never a primary or even secondary read for Williams on the bootleg pass.

“Caleb quickly got off of it and we actually called that backside route by Olamide a ‘hero post’ on the backside of our keeper,” Johnson said. “It’s one of those that’s rarely ever thrown. We always talk about if you’re a third or fourth string quarterback in the preseason and you want to be a hero, that’s when you throw that thing because it’s so rarely thrown.

“He happened to find it, it was open and we just barely missed that thing.”

The one to Odunze was more on Williams.

“Rome ran a great route and Caleb was working through his progression,” Johnson said. “The front side didn’t work out the way that we needed it to. As he was getting back to his second and third read, he ended up seeing Rome pop and just left him a little bit short.

“Both of those were a little bit of him seeing the field really well.”

The TD pass when Williams chose against the sure first down to D’Andre Swift, as they designed it, and threw deep to Kmet for the touchdown was lauded by Johnson and also Kmet.

“I think most quarterbacks would just probably throw it to the (running) back and take the first down, but Caleb was kind of big-game hunting there and threw it up and spun the ball well enough for it to cut through the wind even though he put some air underneath it, and it was a perfect throw and obviously kind of really sealed the deal for us there down the stretch,” Kmet said.

The wind gusted strongly at the time of the 28-yard TD pass.

“Yeah, well Caleb actually had a throw earlier, I think on that drive, where he kind of lofted it up and I think he kind of in that fourth quarter got a good feel for really how to throw it in the wind and, I mean, it was blowing for sure,” Kmet said. “A lot of gusts up there, especially when the ball was hanging up.

“It felt, you know, we were running the ball a lot and felt myself kind of pop there on the corner. Didn’t know if Caleb would get to me.”

They’ll need every bit of success they can draw out of practice reps this week because Green Bay ranks sixth against the pass and with Micah Parsons rushing the strong pass-blocking unit will be hard-pressed to protect.

That includes getting the simple things right, like Williams’ cadence and the motions.

“We had a lot of moving parts there in that (Eagles) game to create some eye candy for those defensive players, and I thought he executed it really well for the most part,” Johnson said of Williams. “I screwed up a play call and he made it right for me. And so, that was good to see.

“He’s getting better each and every week in that regard of playing the quarterback position. Like I said, it’s all hands-on deck for us to clean up this passing game to make it more of a weapon.”

It’s going to fall on all of them, just more on the guy throwing it to apply their fix