With the Bears off on Wednesday, I had time for some extra reading, and The Athletic picked the perfect day to drop Dan Pompei’s exclusive on Ben Johnson, based on a full day he spent at Bears camp last week. If you haven’t read it, go read it. It’s free for non-subscribers right now and worth your time.
But one passage stopped me because it reframed a play I believed I understood—a play some fans spent an evening dragging Caleb Williams for. The ugliest throw of Chicago’s Wild Card win might have been the most encouraging thing the quarterback did all year. You just had to be in the right room to see it.
The Caleb Williams Interception Ben Johnson Called His “Best of the Season”
In Pompei’s story, Johnson talked about a play in the Week 18 game against the Detroit Lions where the defense gave Jared Goff an unusual look. Johnson saw it as a learning opportunity for Williams, so he showed him the play and gave him the solution. He didn’t emphasize it and didn’t think it would come up soon—let alone the very next game. But it did.
“In the regular-season finale last year, the Bears defense threw an unusual look at Goff. Johnson thought it was a learning opportunity for Williams, so he showed him the play and gave him the solution. It was a brief conversation. Johnson didn’t emphasize it and didn’t think it would be an issue for Williams anytime soon, let alone the next game. But it was. And Williams was ready. He recognized the look and threw the ball right where he was supposed to. A receiver didn’t have it down like Williams did, however, and the route bust resulted in an interception. But Johnson thought it was Williams’ ‘best interception of the season’ because it showed how locked in his quarterback was.”
This is the play from the Green Bay game that Johnson was talking about:
pic.twitter.com/4Efmq7uXsb
— Patrick K. Flowers (@PatrickKFlowers) January 11, 2026At the time, and reasonably so given the gravity of the game and the moment, Williams got shredded online for it.
I went back to my write-up from that game to see where my head was and realized I’d seen the same thing Johnson did before anyone knew he’d taught it:
“This play felt doomed from the start. There was a lot of motion, and it seemed like Williams and Luther Burden III were never on the same page, and that turned out to be painfully accurate, with LB3 running a different route than Williams had in mind, resulting in what amounted to essentially an arm punt on this fourth-down conversion attempt,” I wrote in January.
But this was never a scorekeeping exercise. It’s about seeing real-time growth from Williams and understanding exactly where the third-year quarterback sits in Johnson’s system.
One thing we’ve talked about a lot is Williams and Johnson’s daily in-season meetings, which can last one to two hours. Johnson, who otherwise stays away from the quarterbacks’ room during daily meetings, believes those sessions let truths be told in both directions in an unguarded setting. Those meetings turned a throwaway Week 18 look into a rep Williams was ready for a week later.
Among the ridiculous superlatives that followed Williams from USC to Chicago were that he might not be coachable, might not be able to play in a structured offense, and might lack sufficient processing speed. Johnson put all of that to bed in the Pompei feature.
“I don’t have any concerns in those areas,” Johnson told Pompei. “He showed it to me. Now it’s just a matter of time.”
QB Caleb Williams talks with Bears Head Coach Ben Johnson during Minicamp at Halas Hall. Mandatory Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn ImagesThe Evidence Is Showing Up in Pads Now
It’s not all rainbows and sunshine. Pompei detailed a moment in which Johnson laid into his quarterback and offense while watching film of an interception during camp:
“I f—— hate this clip. More than anything. All right? I f—— hate it. It’s not what we’re about. All right? It’s a s—– play. He’s not open, all right? It’s a bad interception. And what I see, I see f—— 11 guys moping. That’s what I see. Someone tell me I’m wrong. Anybody in the room? The one guy that’s closest to the football at the end of the play is our 33-year-old guard. There should be 11 guys in the f—— frame right now.”
That’s the context that makes the “best interception of the season” line land.
Johnson is not a coach who hands out participation trophies. This is the same man who, on a practice field in July, looked at a bad pick and told a room full of grown men he hated the clip, that he saw 11 guys moping, and that the closest player to the ball was a 33-year-old guard.
He isn’t in the business of softening outcomes. So when he separates that interception from the Green Bay one, he’s telling you exactly what he’s grading. Not where the ball ended up. What his quarterback saw before he threw it.
Ever since USC, the book on Williams was that he couldn’t process, couldn’t be coached, couldn’t play in structure, and in the moment, that Green Bay throw got pointed to as one more data point for it. Johnson watched the same play and saw the opposite.
Johnson watched the same play and saw the opposite. Months later, that read is no longer something you have to take on faith or squint at on film. It’s showing up in pads. The processing Johnson defended in that January interception is the same thing that’s had Halas Hall glowing for two weeks: a quarterback who’s stopped drinking from the firehose and started running the offense.
Last January, Williams saw it right and a receiver didn’t. These days he’s the one staying late with the route runners, closing exactly that gap. The evidence was always there. Now it’s just legible to the rest of us.
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