Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold examples of Caleb Williams’ ‘potentially monstrous’ payoff for Bears

Caleb Williams, the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NFL draft, is now eight games into his second season, and his progress has been a mixed bag. Patience is not the order of the day for modern NFL fans, but The Athletic’s Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen took a measured look at the Chicago Bears’ quarterback for the latest episode of “The Athletic Football Show” and came away with a message for Chicago fans.

“I just need everybody to breathe watching and talking about this offense,” Klassen says. “Caleb was not perfect, but I still think that he’s playing fine.”

Halfway through the NFL season, Williams has thrown for 1,636 yards, 9 touchdowns and 4 interceptions. His completion percentage is hovering around where it was last season (between 61% and 62%), but he’s on pace to have a shot at Chicago’s first 4,000-yard season (3,973 currently) and have the same number of TDs as he did in 2024. Despite the positives on the stat sheet, however, frustration is still palpable.

The Bears dropped a very winnable game to the Baltimore Ravens in Week 8, during which Williams went 25-of-38 for 285 yards but had no touchdown passes and a pick. The interception felt particularly emblematic of the flaws in his game, which often come down to timing and judgment.

“(Rome) Odunze is running this dig crosser route from the left-hand side, and Caleb should know that when you get to the top of your drop, if you want it, you throw it immediately. Because otherwise, once the receiver starts to flatten out, the corner is going to start to flatten out and be able to accelerate and get under it,” Klassen explains. “Caleb waits an extra hitch, throws it a little bit late. Corner is able to accelerate and get under it and pick it off. Caleb should know that when he takes that moment of hesitation, ‘I should bail. I should check it down. I should do anything but throw that route late over the middle of the field.’ He does it, throws the pick.”

“When he hits the top of his drop, as soon as that ball does not come out, that hitch should take you to the checkdown,” Mays explains. “It’s exactly how the timing of the play is supposed to work. It’s wide open. Not only does he not throw it, he throws (to Odunze) late and inaccurately over the middle of the field. He leaves it inside because he feels Marlon Humphrey sitting there. The only reason that Humphrey is even a part of the play is because he threw it late. And so everything that happens in that moment is 100% on (Williams).”

Plays like that, mixed with puzzling inaccuracy on certain passes, are why fans are concerned their would-be franchise quarterback may cap out early. Mays says the misses are certainly frustrating, and sometimes inexplicable, but Williams is hardly the first big-armed young passer to have issues.

“The one example I would come back to if I were a hopeful Bears fan is that even in his second year, Josh Allen had a lot of issues with accuracy throwing the ball down the field,” he says. “He did a very good job of starting to hone the intermediate area of the field in his second year in 2019, but whenever they tried to push the ball down the field, they were rarely successful.”

Mays also points out that Allen’s issues were isolated to the deep ball, whereas Williams tends to have unprompted misses on a wider array of throws, but the duo also mentioned the runway owed to the sophomore.

Williams’ first year under Matt Eberflus could most charitably be called a wash, and this season he began anew with Ben Johnson, one of the more complex play callers in the league. In some ways, he’s still at least half-rookie and is still showing a lot more on the field than most prospects his age.

“It is frustrating that he has these moments where he’s a little bit jittery, you know, off his rhythm or (making situational mistakes). (But) Sam Darnold was like this early in his career. Baker Mayfield was like this early in his career,” Klassen says. “Caleb is more talented than those guys and has shown way more positives than those guys really did. He should get the runway to do this with the coaching staff and team that he has in a way those guys didn’t.”

The problem at this point is that although Williams doesn’t have one massive hole in his game, he is borrowing a bit from each of those other examples. He can be jittery, or inaccurate, or make a situational mistake. Rarely do those flaws persist over an entire game, but they can surface at any time. Still, the returns on Mayfield, Darnold and Allen have been franchise-altering once they settled in, and with just seven second-year starts in a brand-new system, Williams is far from a finished product.

“Guys that are hyper-talented, that maybe lack a little bit of feel early in their careers, let’s let them figure it out,” Mays says. “Because the reward waiting on the other end of this is potentially monstrous.”

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