Film study: Breaking down Caleb Williams’ second game with Bears OC Thomas Brown

Caleb Williams didn’t want to use the word at first, afraid of what it would sound like, when asked how new offensive coordinator Thomas Brown had coached him.

“I don’t want to use this word, but ‘aura’, I guess,” the Bears rookie quarterback said Sunday. “He has a certain aura to him that he just allows you to play free. He knows what he wants. You know he knows what he wants. Whether it’s checks, alerts, all of that, we still have a bunch of those, all these different things. Being able to play free.”

The most encouraging part of the Bears’ offensive coordinator change is the fact that Williams is playing like the college version of himself.

Sunday, he went 32-for-47 for 340 yards, two touchdowns and a 103.1 passer rating — though the magic ran out in overtime in the 30-27 loss to the Vikings.

“Throughout the game, play the game the right way, make adjustments, all these different things — throw hot, make the right reads, play within the offense,” Williams said. “When it’s time to be Superman, it’s kind of what [Brown] tells me. That is what he tells me in the headset: ‘Go be Superman at the end of the game.’”

The Bears are still waiting on the Superman experience — they’ve lost five games in a row. But there’s plenty to be intrigued about when it comes to the pairing of Brown and the No. 1 overall pick.

In nine games under Shane Waldron, Williams posted a passer rating of 81. In two games under Brown — and playing defenses that rank among the 10 best in the NFL in yards and points allowed — Williams has posted a 99.9.

If that success continues — a tall task, given the opponents ahead — it’s fair to wonder if the Bears will find a way to keep Brown teamed with Williams next year. The only way to ensure that would be to name Brown the head coach, and he’s interviewed for head coach positions before, most recently with the Titans last offseason. Even with a strong showing by Williams through the end of the season, though, Brown might be a tough sell. Disappointing teams rarely promote from within.

In the meantime, he’s putting Williams in better position to succeed. The quarterback praised Brown’s emphasis on getting the team to the line of scrimmage quickly where Williams could use different cadences to affect the timing of the defense. Even Vikings veteran safety Harrison Smith was hampered by it, bailing out from the line of scrimmage, at times.

Here are three plays, good and bad, that encapsulated Williams’ second game with Brown:

The deep in

After the Bears recovered an onside kick, they had 21 seconds to complete a pass to get into field-goal range and either get out of bounds and spike the football. With the ball at the Bears’ 43, the team split three receivers left: Rome Odunze in the slot, Keenan Allen to his left and DJ Moore on the outside.

On the snap, Odunze ran an over route and Allen ran a deep in. Moore did, too, as the deepest receiver. Odunze was open at the Vikings’ 41, but Williams wanted more, dropping a pass over the heads of two Vikings players and into Moore’s arms for a 27-yard gain. The Bears kicked a game-tying field goal on the next play.

“I’ve never seen the ball come my way during that play in practice,” Moore said Monday. “But when it did in the game, I was just like, ‘I just gotta make a play on it.’”

The players discussed the play during the week, detailing exactly where Williams wanted the receivers against specific coverages.

“I think it starts from all the small things,” Williams said.

The lob

On second-and-12 from the Vikings’ 41 in the first quarter, Williams miscounted the number of Vikings players set to rush. He thought there were five — and the Vikings sent six.

Outside linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel ran at Williams untouched, so he couldn’t throw the ball in the flat to running back D’Andre Swift on a hot route. Instead, Williams had to roll right to escape Van Ginkel’s reach. He sprinted right and, with linebacker Blake Cashman closing in, lofted a pass toward Swift, who had broken up the sideline ahead of linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill. Swift caught the perfectly placed lob over his right shoulder for a 30-yard gain.

“The linebacker had his eyes on me,” Williams said. “D’Andre made a — no pun intended — a swift move up field. I triggered it knowing how much space I had. Just wanted to give him a shot, kind of makeup for my little mess-up right there at the beginning of the play.”

The sack

On the second play of overtime, Williams took a shotgun snap, held the ball for a full nine seconds and took a sack. It was his worst decision of the game.

Williams was confused by the Vikings dropping Cashman and Grugier-Hill into coverage after they lined up in a double-mug look over the center. That left the Bears seven blockers — the five linemen plus tight end Cole Kmet and Swift — to block three players. At one point, the Bears had four blockers on nose tackle Harrison Phillips and Kmet and Swift on Jonathan Greenard. Kmet and Swift released from the block to look for an improvised checkdown on the left, but Williams’ eyes were looking right, where all his other receivers were struggling to get open against eight defenders.

“The whole concept was to the right,” Kmet said.

By the time he looked left, Williams. couldn’t throw the ball over Greenard, who sacked him for a loss of 12. Williams said he needed to throw the ball away, and his coach agreed.

“He had plenty of time,” Matt Eberflus said.