Let’s survey the internet and see where the “experts” have the Bears turning with the tenth overall selection.

Carter Landis, at the magazine formerly known as Sports Illustrated:

10. Chicago Bears – Kelvin Banks Jr., OT, Texas

“The Bears made multiple improvements to the offensive line during free agency, but making another won’t hurt. Banks has the size and strength to play tackle or guard at the next level.”

Bucky Brooks, at NFL.com:

10. Omarion Hampton, North Carolina, RB

“Ben Johnson’s immense success with a two-back rotation in Detroit could prompt Chicago to expend its top pick on a physical runner to partner with the dynamic D’Andre Swift.”

Chris Trapasso, at CBS Sports:

10. Mike Green, Marshall, Edge

“The Bears go with a high-upside outside speed rusher from Marshall in Green, who has the tools to develop into an All-Pro type. Learning from Montez Sweat will aid that process.”

Walter Football:

10. Kenneth Grant, Michigan, DT

“The Bears did a great job of addressing their offensive line. They still have some work to do in that regard, but they can now focus on their defensive front, which needs upgrades on the edge and in the interior. Grady Jarrett was signed, but he’s aging out of the NFL.

Kenneth Grant has flashed upside and is considered an underrated talent. Some of Charlie Campbell’s sources prefer Grant to Mason Graham.”

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The Bears possess three of the first 41 draft selections in this coming draft, and expectations would be that each of those three players would be potential starters/contributors in 2025. So, where are the biggest needs on this roster as currently constituted?

(1) Edge Rusher. The Bears simply don’t have enough pressure on this roster. They have strengthened their defensive line with the additions of Grady Jarrett and Dayo Odeyingbo, allowing Andrew Billings to log fewer miles and Gervon Dexter to slide into a more natural role. But their edge rotation is still severely lacking. But will a player to fill this role be available at their three selections?

(2) Corner. It is a position simply not discussed enough on the whole of social media. The Bears have one top shelf corner. That’s it. Tyrique Stevenson is a temperamental liability. Kyler Gordon is solid, if unspectacular, in the slot. (I’ll be fascinated to see Gordon in Dennis Allen’s scheme.) The Bears don’t need corner depth. They need someone to line up opposite Jaylon Johnson every Sunday.

What could be third? I think Braxton Jones will be much improved with Joe Thuney at his side. I think the improved offensive line and play calling will lead to a more productive backfield. So, where is a starter required?

(3) Wide Receiver. Olamide Zaccheaus can play. Call me crazy but I think Tyler Scott has value. But we are seeing, every year, wide receivers from throughout the draft make immediately contributions in the sport. The Bears can target that position with one of these picks and not only find a starter, but a star. I have a mantra for roster building in this league: Always Be Adding Weapons (ABAW).

THE FINALE!!

Rookie Variability

So far in this series, we’ve seen that Caleb Williams was generally a sub-par passer in his rookie season, and he particularly struggled with deep accuracy and letting too many pressures turn into sacks. One thing we haven’t given much thought to, however, is how much the inconsistency around him may have impacted his performance and development. Chicago went through two head coaches and three offensive coordinators during the season, and it’s not hard to imagine that chaos may have made life difficult on a rookie QB.

In order to see if the data suggests this was the case, I broke Williams’ season up into a number of segments that matched key off-field moments during the season:

• Weeks 1-3: The start of the year.
• Weeks 4-6: After week three, offensive leaders had a meeting with then offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and asked for him to be more aggressive in his coaching. This period starts immediately after that meeting and runs until the bye.
• Weeks 8-10: After the bye, Waldron reverted back to early season form, and he was fired after week 10.
• Weeks 11-13: Thomas Brown’s time as the offensive coordinator.
• Weeks 14+: Thomas Brown’s time as the head coach, with Chris Beatty serving as offensive coordinator.

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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General Overview

Let’s start with a general look at how Williams performed against man and zone coverage in 2024. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

Before we get into the data, a quick caveat: PFF doesn’t publicly show this data by QB, but instead by pass catcher. I manually compiled it team by team to do comparisons, but it doesn’t include all throws. This accounts for a little over 80% of Williams’ total pass attempts; it for sure does not include throwaways with no pass target (which PFF says were about 10% of Caleb’s throws), and I would imagine also does not include some screens where the play developed too quickly to determine the coverage.

With that said, the table below shows how Williams fared throwing against both man and zone compared to the NFL average (I couldn’t do the usual NFL high/medium/low since this wasn’t split up by QB).

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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Under Pressure

We’ve already seen that Caleb Williams was under pressure pretty frequently, so how did he hold up when that happened?

The table below shows how Williams performed in a wide variety of statistics when kept clean (blue) vs. pressured (orange), and also includes Williams’ rank (in parentheses) out of 34 total NFL QBs who had at least 250 pass attempts. Information on the spread of all NFL QBs is also provided for each stat. Cells highlighted in green indicate Williams was among the top 25% of QBs in this category, while those in red indicate Williams was in the bottom 25% of QBs. A further explanation of big time throws and turnover worthy plays was given in the play action article; generally, more big-time throws is good, and more turnover-worthy plays is bad. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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Pressure Frequency

As we already noted in the first part of this series, Caleb Williams was sacked 68 times this year, the highest value in the NFL by a wide margin. So today, I want to try and figure out who is to blame for that, which will help give insight into how the Bears can fix it going forward.

The table below shows how frequently every position was blamed for giving up pressure on the QB. Williams’ stats are shown, with context provided by giving his rank compared to 34 NFL QBs with 250+ pass attempts, plus the best, average, and worst marks for that sample. Any values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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In part one, we saw that Caleb Williams generally struggled as a passer during his rookie season, and part two revealed that most of those struggles came on deeper passes. Today, we’ll continue diving deeper into Williams’ statistical profile to try and figure out where improvement is most needed going forward.

Play Action

Let’s start by looking at how Caleb Williams did on play-action drop backs compared to standard passing plays. Before I present the full data, I want to briefly explain two PFF stats that will be used:

• Big Time Throw. These are best described as a pass with excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field and/or into a tighter window. In other words, these are really good, difficult passes that should result in highly valuable big plays. A higher % here is better.
• Turnover Worthy Play. These include fumbles in the pocket, interceptions thrown, and interceptable passes that were not caught. A lower % here is better.

Both of these stats will admittedly have some subjectivity, but they provide a useful glimpse into how frequently a QB makes a really good play vs. a really bad one.

The table below shows how Williams performed in a wide variety of statistics in play action (orange) vs. other dropbacks (blue), and also includes Williams’ rank (in parentheses) out of 34 total NFL QBs who had at least 250 pass attempts. Information on the spread of all NFL QBs is also provided for each stat. Cells highlighted in green indicate Williams was among the top 25% of QBs in this category, while those in red indicate Williams was in the bottom 25% of QBs. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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