The Bears’ plan to put as little burden on quarterback Caleb Williams as a rookie has been flipped upside down.
Even with Williams hyped as the most talented and NFL-ready draft prospect in years and the slam-dunk No. 1 pick in both the Bears’ estimation and the consensus of the league, general manager Ryan Poles’ blueprint was to make everything around him so strong that it could withstand the typical twists and turns of a rookie season.
Much of that crumbled already, though, and now any hope the Bears have of salvaging this derail season ride on Williams. In half a season they went from having everything in place for Williams to begging him to save them.
If that’s discouraging to Williams, who had quite a few questions for the Bears about their history of ruining quarterbacks during the pre-draft process, he hasn’t shown it. Despite him and the team plunging from their peak of leaving London 4-2 on a scoring binge last month, he has been steadfastly confident.
“He ain’t fazed at all,” running back D’Andre Swift said. “He’s going to learn from everything.”
Nonetheless, it’s terrible timing for the team to be teetering. With the Bears under .500 despite having played the lighter half of their schedule, the Packers come to Soldier Field on Sunday to begin a homestretch in which seven of eight games are against teams currently with a winning record. On paper, it’s the hardest remaining schedule in the NFL by a wide margin.
That schedule appeared to be advantageous to the Bears initially. Most of the first nine games would be winnable even if Williams needed time to find his footing, then right around now he’d be thriving and ready to go up against the NFL’s best.
Instead, neither he nor the Bears look ready for any challenge. They just lost 19-3 to the Patriots, who at the time were in line for the first pick in the draft at 2-7. Williams is near the bottom of the league in passer rating (81.0), and the Bears have scored the ninth-fewest points (19.4).
The problems and misjudgments have been widespread, which is disturbing given the Bears’ determination to get every aspect right as they onboarded their next franchise quarterback in what they hoped would be a turning point for the organization.
The starting point on this mess was Poles’ ill-fated decision in January to bring back coach Matt Eberflus despite meltdowns on the field and fiascos away from it. With the administration already tilting toward moving on from Justin Fields and rebooting at quarterback, the opportunity to reset under an offensive-minded head coach was clear.
The next whiff was on letting Eberflus — with significant involvement by Poles — choose the next offensive coordinator. Shane Waldron lasted nine games, much of it marked by player objections, mind-boggling play calls and meager results.
Eberflus had finally seen and heard enough Tuesday morning when he fired Waldron and gave the job to Thomas Brown, formerly Waldron’s assistant as passing-game coordinator. Brown might be a better voice for Williams, who kept mentioning “communication” as a concern under Waldron.
“I’m a pretty direct person,” Brown said. “That’s what I told him. I’ve been in the room the entire time, but just in a different capacity.
“On game day, when it comes to how you deliver information, [I want] to be solution-oriented, keep myself calm, keep him calm as well, decompress in every single drive to look forward to what’s coming in the next drive.”
The midseason switch was necessary, but still a bad look for the Bears. And if it turns out Brown has all the answers and connects with Williams, it raises the major question of why they didn’t hire him over Waldron in the first place. Both were among the nine candidates Poles and Eberflus interviewed.
Roster-wise, Poles thought he had ideal infrastructure for Williams with an excellent defense to provide him margin, an enviable crew of skill players and an offensive line that was still under construction but sturdy enough. Each of those has faltered at times, some more than others, but the offensive line is the biggest issue.
Williams has been sacked a league-high 38 times and been pressured on 25.3% of his drop-backs, fourth-most.
And the Bears haven’t been able to take pressure off him by relying on their run game because they don’t have one. They’re averaging four yards per carry (fifth-worst) and 108.1 per game (ninth-worst).
Virtually everything that was supposed to work to Williams’ advantage has worked against him instead. He’d have to be Superman to turn that around, and while he might be one day, he sure isn’t at the moment.
No matter how optimistic people are or how much conviction they have about his talent, there’s no disputing he hasn’t been as good as he or anyone else expected so far. He looks a lot like an ordinary rookie quarterback, which would actually be fine for the Bears if everything else was clicking.