LONDON — It’s rarely smooth sailing for rookie quarterbacks — even the good ones — and the Bears likely will ride out some roiling seas with Caleb Williams.
He’ll stumble, fumble and throw interceptions. His two strong performances against bad defenses in the last two games do not mean he has forever moved past those problems.
It’s important, though, that he keeps advancing. He can continue his education and progress even amid some snags. There’s a difference between nonlinear development and outright regression. It’s crucial that Williams demonstrates he’s climbing Sunday against the Jaguars at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, even if he makes mistakes.
He did not, it turns out, know everything the moment he set foot in the NFL. And Williams never claimed to, even as he proclaimed enormous goals when he set out to “create and rewrite history” well before the Bears drafted him first overall. That was entirely an expectation from fans and media wowed by his stunning career at USC.
In reality, it should never be surprising when a quarterback struggles at the onset of his career.
“No matter how talented you are, and he’s a super talented, cerebral guy who works his [butt] off, he’s still a rookie in the NFL,” Bears passing game coordinator Thomas Brown said. “You’re talking about having to read NFL defenses, understand a new playbook and adjust to a new environment. It’s a normal progression so far.
“He never got rattled, from what I could tell. He’s super competitive, but also has a really good perspective about what it takes to excel. He has a really good balance for the highs and lows of the position.”
Williams opened with a 65.3 passer rating and five turnovers over his first three games, before delivering a remarkably efficient effort against the Rams and weaving together arguably the best performance by a rookie in recent Bears history by going 20 of 29 for 304 yards and two touchdowns to pummel the Panthers.
That ground has been well traveled by now, and those games can be celebrated for only so long before everyone turns their attention to where he goes from there.
“How you respond to those adversities in a game is going to be important,” coach Matt Eberflus said. “If it’s good, bad, or indifferent, you’ve got to move to the next series.
“Every game creates its own situation where you can learn from that performance, so that’s what you need to do… We’ve just got to keep that mindset.”
If Williams stays on this arc and shows his recent upswing is meaningful movement toward becoming the franchise quarterback the Bears need, it’ll be easier to connect the dots from his rough first three games to where he’s headed.
If not, it’s something the Bears have seen before.
It looked like something clicked for Justin Fields halfway through his 2021 rookie season when he nearly toppled the Steelers on Monday Night Football. He threw for 291 yards in that one, but exceeded that just once the rest of his Bears career.
Mitch Trubisky lit up the Bengals late in his first season in 2017 with a stat line that looked a lot like Williams’ against the Panthers and took another step forward the next season before beginning a decline that led to the Bears trading for Nick Foles in 2020.
Both had other highlights in their brief time with the Bears, predominantly when facing feeble defenses, but neither could sustain that. It turns out those purportedly promising performances were just aberrations.
The Bears are higher on Williams than they ever could have been on Fields or Trubisky, and general manager Ryan Poles said recently he is “right where he should be” at this stage. They’re confident the areas in which Williams played better the last two weeks will translate no matter the opponent.
But belief always comes easily with Bears quarterbacks. Proof is harder.