Bears quarterback Caleb Williams figures now is the time to fail.
Time, though, is running short.
The Bears already have more training camp practices in their rearview mirror than they have in front of them. The first preseason game looms Saturday — though it’d be surprising if starters play relevant snaps — with Week 1 four-and-a-half-weeks in the future.
There won’t be many more opportunities for Williams to do what he did Tuesday afternoon — face players in full pads chasing him. Williams was promising in the Bears’ scrimmage on the Halas Hall backfields, at one point covering 80 yards in two plays on throws to receivers Rome Odunze and Scotty Miller after being backed up on his 1-yard line.
He still needs to be more accurate — he led both Kalif Raymond and Colston Loveland too far on pass attempts earlier in practice — but appeared to break out of the stagnancy he showed during the second week of training camp.
For all the attention given him this offseason — “Madden 27,” whose cover he graces, will be released Thursday — Williams still needs to grow considerably to get to where the Bears want him to be. That growth needs to happen on the backfields at Halas Hall. When the season begins, he’ll have fewer chances to make significant improvements in practice.
Williams started the first four-day chunk of training camp red-hot before plateauing over the past week. Tuesday, the Bears hope, was a turning point.
“That’s the point of this moment, this time, being able to go out there and fail,” Williams said. “Go out there and come back to the film room and correct it and go out there the next day … and correct it and get it right — so that Coach has the proper confidence in myself, but also the team to be able to go out there on game days.”
Coach Ben Johnson took the blame for some of Williams’ stagnancy before Tuesday’s practice. In two weeks, the Bears have installed, in Johnson’s estimation, 98% of their offense. The sheer volume of plays he installed was meant to test Williams — and for the coaching staff to better determine how to whittle down the Week 1 playbook.
“I’ve put in more this year on offense than I did a year ago by design …” Johnson said. “I want it to feel like a lot right now.”
Things started to slow down Tuesday. For the first time in camp, the Bears didn’t plan exactly what plays they were going to run in each drill. When the defense presented a certain coverage, Williams could change the play or the protection.
In the first two weeks, the Bears simply ran the plays that were called, making it harder to assess where certain players stood. Before practice, Johnson told Williams and the offense that Tuesday was “a big day of creating evidence.” It would weigh into “where everyone stands on the roster,” he said — and perhaps whether they’ll play against the Browns in Saturday’s exhibition debut. After meeting with general manager Ryan Poles on Wednesday, Johnson figures to have a playing-time game plan in place Thursday.
Part of what made Tuesday’s scrimmage so important for Williams was the possibility that he could play so little in preseason games. Rather, the Bears could rely on Tuesday’s scrimmage and joint practices with the Bengals and Titans the next two weeks to stress-test their quarterback.
Williams, for his part, said he didn’t have a preference for whether he’d play Saturday — or in the preseason at all. But he might have tipped his hand when he said he likes to treat practices and joint practices like games — “because that may be what I get, and that may not be what I get.”
Late in practice Tuesday, Williams was backed up on his own 1-yard line, needing two first downs to win the drill. After throwing the ball away on first down when rookie Dillon Thieneman blitzed from his blind side, Williams dropped back and considered checking the ball down to a running back. When a defensive end looked around in that direction, he fired to Odunze, whose catch-and-run up the right sideline went 58 yards.
On the next play, veteran Scotty Miller ran a crossing route. Williams lost sight of him for a second — “That’s what happens when you’re on the shorter end,” Williams said — before seeing him emerge between two linebackers. He caught the pass and slid down to end the drill.
Williams celebrated. It wasn’t a game, but it might have to do — at least until the Bears travel to Cincinnati for practice next week.
“He’s taken complete control of what we’re trying to do,” Johnson said. “And so we’re on the right track.”
They’re not there yet.