Yeah, I would think a rookie would especially be at the mercy of the coaches in a situation like this, and it’s not deflecting blame to say so.
I think we can conclude from Williams’ rookie season that if you can give your QB a good receiving corps or good offensive line, you should go for the latter. I guess the Bears couldn’t have known Odunze would fall to them but the Keenan Allen trade now looks like a huge waste.
Definitely. Williams is leading the league (by a lot) in sacks. I’m hopeful, for his sake, that he does not suffer the fate of guys like David Carr and Archie Manning: very high draft choices, who were supposed to be stars, but got the hell beaten out of them early in their careers behind bad lines, and never lived up to their potential.
I don’t know about that. While things have definitely not worked out, I’m not sure I’d opt out of the Allen trade. That 4th round pick is valuable, but it’s not like we’d have been likely to land a difference making OL at that spot. We drafted a project OL with our 3rd round pick and he’s been wildly overmatched in his limited playing time. This was a historically bad draft for OLs.
Allen’s contract also didn’t limit us from signing FA OLs. We had plenty of cap flexibility and could have signed anyone who was willing to come. Allen has had drops and got off to a slow start, but I wouldn’t say he hampered either Caleb or Rome’s development in any way. And being a well-liked veteran, he probably helped in some intangible ways.
The big mistake in my view was trading for Montez Sweat last year. This is obviously with hindsight, so take it for what it’s worth, but we sent a 2nd round pick (2.8) to the Commies for the privilege of paying Sweat $100M over 4 years. Sweat played great for 7 games last year but has tapered off significantly this season. While he’s still a plus player, I think we could have spent that $100M in FA and gotten comparable results. I bring this up because with the 2nd round pick we gave away we could have drafted Jackson Powers-Johnson and he would have solved so many of our problems. He’s playing like an absolute beast after moving to Center and is making a case to be the top Center in the league already.
We also traded a 5th round pick for Ryan Bates pre-draft. The thinking at the time was that he’d be our starting Center, but he ended up losing out to Shelton (which is damning) in camp and then has been hurt for much of the season. While there’s really no way to know what would have happened, would we have traded for Bates had we still had our 2nd round pick? Would we have drafted JPJ if Bates were on the roster? Who knows, but this is a butterfly effect that causes me to lose sleep.
Andrew Luck is the first one that pops into my head.
He even had to retire from football altogether early to protect his health.
Fortunately, in spite of the sack number, Caleb hasn’t really taken a lot of really significant hits. Knock wood, but he has a knack for avoiding collisions or getting lit up in the pocket. Definitely not sustainable, but unlike these other guys he hasn’t been on the injury report every damn week.
Did Eberflus sneak back onto the sideline WTF was that 4th down call?!
It was the right call. And the right play call, we had numbers on that side. Swift is just a giant pussy. The guy tackled him with his fucking back.
Jinx…
I’m struggling to decide my opinion of Caleb. He can make all the throws, his off script play can be Mahomes-esque, and he doesn’t seem to have the fragile mental state that dooms lots of highly drafted QBs. But he also seems to rely too heavily on those off-script plays and much of his statistical success comes when the game is well out of reach.
Of course, there are always the usual Bears QB’s excuses: crappy O line/bad coaching, and we’re only 14 games into his career, so who knows. But I’d be a bit less confident in him now than I would have been right after draft day.
If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that just drafting a QB is insufficient.
If the team is dysfunctional and the coaching/development insufficient, the predictable results follow. That’s assuming the rookie is open to learning, which is not always true, either.
Right now, the rookie QBs that seem to be doing the best are Jayden Daniels and Bo Nix. Daniels has Kliff Kingsbury as OC, and he’s known as a QB whisperer/developer. Nix was clearly nobody’s idea of the best QB available in the draft but has outperformed expectations. Having Sean Payton and Joe Lombardi has almost certainly been a large part of that.
Meanwhile Williams has…well, not the great assemblage of coaching and teammates around him. Ditto several 2nd year QBs who are currently struggling. We mostly judge based on what we see on the field and put most of that on the player, but it seems apparent that the coaches and team drafting the QB makes more of a difference than most of us usually credit.
Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of the time, that early development is critical and permanent career damage can and does result if rookies are put in a bad situation from the start.
It’s been a few weeks since I saw Williams live and not just in highlights. He’s giving me strong Johnny Manziel vibes. Off script improvisation is good to fall back on but it’s a losing strategy. Not all of it can be blamed on the line. He’s not reading quick enough. He’s not letting the ball go quick enough. He’s not throwing the ball away when he needs to.
Justin did the exact same thing constantly for 3 years. I think it’s systemic with this franchise.
Last night was the first time I watched Williams live, and I wasn’t impressed. I thought he overthrew or threw behind a few open receivers, he threw a few passes with extreme velocity when more touch was needed, and his decision making wasn’t impressive. The OL is bad, but he still seemed to scramble too early. And it was panic scrambling in circles, not intelligent.
Maybe this is normal rookie stuff, or maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. But he didn’t look like an amazing QB in a bad system.
Even if it’s normal rookie stuff, that’s still not a good thing. The normal QB can’t be a franchise guy. You only have a handful of those at any given time. When you are picking #1 overall, you expect something exceptional.
Maybe he’ll get better, but he may never have a chance to.
It’s a bit ironic… The Bears had the #1 overall pick in 2023. They traded it to Carolina in exchange for DJ Moore, the first and second round picks from the Panthers in 2023, the Panthers’ first round pick in 2024, and a second-rounder from the Panthers in 2025.
The Panthers drafted Bryce Young in 2023 with that first overall pick, who probably never really had a chance to live up to justifying all that Carolina gave up for him, but more than that he hasn’t been able to really do anything. And Carolina’s 2023 season was so bad, that in 2024 that first round pick that Chicago received was the #1 overall pick as well… Which went to a QB also not looking to be anywhere near worth it (so far at least, who knows).
I think it would be hilarious if in 2025 Chicago gambles on another QB with that second round pick from Carolina, and that guy ends up being the next big superstar. 
At this point I don’t think the judgement is out on Caleb Williams, but he needs to clean some things up for sure or he’s going to be their next underwhelming QB from an absurdly long line of them.
This game was a definite regression. I’m not super worried about Caleb, but it’s pretty clear that the offensive scheme and play design leaves a lot to be desired. He doesn’t trust the blocking and is dropping his eyes which is causing him to miss open targets. He also seems to really struggle on the fade route. He’s much better at slotting the ball into tight windows than he is throwing 50-50 balls on the boundary.
I think a large part of last night’s issues came down to the awful, awful play from the rookie LT. Caleb didn’t trust his blind side and the entire offense floundered. As usual we committed a bunch of dumb penalties putting us behind the sticks. Then when WRs started dropping half the passes, Caleb seemed to get frustrated and started playing hero ball. Not great, but it seemed like the entire team was embarrassed to be on national TV.
I don’t think this looks anything like Fields. Fields seemed lost and confused out there. Caleb seems exasperated. Fields was holding the team back. The team is holding Caleb back now. But who knows, maybe this is wishful thinking, but that’s my read on it.
Thing is, I suspect Fields may end up being at least a serviceable QB. We’ll see how things play out in Pittsburgh. He at least seems to be open to learning behind Wilson.
And if he does, it means it was mainly Chicago unable to develop a QB and limited his ceiling. Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. Not by a long shot. Not even remotely the first time that’s happened in Chicago alone.
Hopefully any new coaching situation in Chicago also involves somebody who personally knows how to develop rookie QBs or has a line on somebody who can. I don’t know if Kliff Kingsbury is anybody’s idea of a long term solution at HC, but there are plenty worse people to bring in to salvage and maximize Williams’ potential.
As a Packer fan, I do really hope the Bears make Kliff Kingsbury their head coach. There is no more over-rated coach out there, and I’d enjoy the end of season tanking his teams always seem to do. Much better to give Bears’ fans hope for a little bit than just wallow in misery.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want him if I wanted to win championships. But if I wanted to get my QB some quality development, there are worse ways to go. Most coaches/teams these days don’t seem to know how to do player development.
Jackson Powers Johnson has a 58 PFF grade on the year. I think you’d rather have Zach Frazier who is the second highest rated rookie at any position.