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.

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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.

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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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Yesterday we saw that Caleb Williams generally struggled as a passer during his rookie season. Today we’re going to dive deeper into those stats to see if we can figure out where it all went wrong.

Sorting By Depth

Let’s look at how frequently and effectively Williams targeted each depth of the field.

The table below shows information splitting the field into four areas, which I will refer to as behind the line, short (0-9 yards), medium (10-19 yards), and deep (20+ yards downfield). Williams’ pass frequency, accuracy, completion percentage, and yards/attempt are shown, as well as how he ranked compared to 34 NFL QBs with at least 250 pass attempts. The best, average, and worst value from around the NFL is given, and any areas where Williams was in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while areas 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.)

[Quick note: I realize the numbers for frequency don’t add up to 100%, but this is PFF’s data, and it’s the same data for everybody, so I’m just rolling with it for a fair comparison. My guess is that they are excluding throwaway passes that didn’t have a clearly defined target, which account for the missing percentage.]

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How good was Caleb Williams as a rookie?

Expectations were sky high for Chicago’s signal caller after they drafted him with the #1 overall pick, added playmakers like Keenan Allen, Gerald Everett, D’Andre Swift, and Rome Odunze to the offense, and tapped Shane Waldron, one of the most highly regarded offensive coordinators on the market, to lead the unit. Many in the media argued that Williams was stepping into a historically good situation for a QB selected #1 overall.

Offseason optimism quickly turned into a real-life dumpster fire, however.

• Gerald Everett was clearly washed up and managed only 36 receiving yards (this should not have been a surprise).
• Keenan Allen spent a good chunk of the season looking washed up and had arguably the worst healthy season of his career.
• DJ Moore, fresh off a career season and monster extension, spent much of the year looking disinterested in playing football and had one of the worst seasons of his career.
• Chicago’s offensive line saw ten players play at least 100 snaps while giving up a league-worst 68 sacks.
• Chicago cycled through two head coaches and three offensive coordinators.

Through all this chaos, Caleb Williams somehow managed to start all 17 games, playing all but 13 offensive snaps, and threw for 3,541 yards, with 20 touchdowns to 6 interceptions. He even added 489 rushing yards, bringing him over 4,000 yards from scrimmage on the season. Pretty good, right?

Those are all volume numbers, but don’t say all that much about how well a player actually performed. In this series, we’re going to dive into Williams’ advanced statistical profile to see what he did well, where he struggled, and what insights we can glean about his future.

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It was Caleb, kids.

Three hundred and forty yards.

We have one, at last.

This defensive group.

What is it that they do well?

The answer? Not much.

Flus will coach Thursday.

Detroit will blow their doors off.

Then comes Black Friday?

My brother once bought me a Rex Grossman Florida Gators jersey, and when Rex was the quarterback of the Chicago Bears, we would hang that jersey in the bar at Josie Woods. Whenever Rex would throw a touchdown pass, I would (drunkenly) shout “WHO WANTS TO GET REXED?!?!?” This was followed by my removing the dank garment from the wall and tossing it over the head of an unwitting bystander to the applause of the celebratory horde. There was an irony to that ritual. I knew Rex Grossman wasn’t a great quarterback and was fairly certain he would never be a great quarterback. But he was our quarterback in that moment and that was all that mattered. I would have done the same for any of ’em.

Miller and Matthews.

Kyle Orton.

Kordell Stewart.

Jay Cutler.

Glennon and Dalton.

Mitch Trubisky.

Justin Fields.

The parade of young men who have attempted to fill this team’s quarterbacking void is a murderer’s row of mediocrity (or worse). It seemed clear to me, as I live out my 43rd year on the planet earth and my 20th year writing about the Chicago Bears, that a franchise quarterback was not something I would ever experience. I had submitted my letter of resignation to my boss at Hope, Incorporated, a subsidiary of Belief Enterprises. The framed pictures of Sarah, Bear and Beatrix that had adorned my office desk were now neatly placed into a cardboard box, as I awaited security’s escort to the parking lot.

But then I woke up on Sunday morning, October 13th, 2024, and everything changed.

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Through five games, Caleb Williams:

• Completion percentage: 62.9%
• Yards: 1,091
  • Two 300-yard games in his last three.
  • Projects to 3,709 yards, just a hundred or so below the most in the history of the franchise
• Touchdowns: 5
• Interceptions: 4
  • 0 in last two games.
• Passer Rating: 81.3
  • Increased 30 points between weeks 2 and 3.
  • Increased 26 points between weeks 3 and 4.
  • Increased 20 points between weeks 4 and 5.
• And for all those salivating over Jayden Daniels, it is interesting to note that Daniels has one (1) more win, one (1) less touchdown and only 44 more passing yards.

So here is my poll question for the comments section below: what are fair seasonal expectations for Caleb Williams? Give me your answers in HAIKU FORM. Best response gets into this week’s game preview.