Evaluating QB1: “Grimy Win” Provides More Evidence of Caleb Williams’ Growth ...Middle East

The Chicago Bears enter the bye week at 2-2 after squeaking out a win against the Raiders in Las Vegas on Sunday. While it wasn’t the best game we’ve ever seen Caleb Williams play, it certainly wasn’t a bad game.

Williams’ box score performance won’t earn him votes for league-wide accolades like his previous performance, when he was named the NFC Offensive Player of the Week last Wednesday. Still, Williams put plenty of good on the tape, and in the end, helped guide his team to a—as the second-year quarterback said on Sunday after the game—grimy win.

Let’s dive into some of Williams’ Week 4 performance.

Caleb Williams Week 4 Stats

“Grimy Win” Provides More Evidence of Caleb Williams’ Growth

We will start with the interception by Maxx Crosby in the first quarter.

A few things here:

A) The design or effort by D’Andre Swift and DJ Moore at the bottom of the screen on the left side wasn’t good at all. I’m inclined to believe that it was more of an effort/execution issue than a design issue, because with the concepts up top on the right side, Moore and Swift were supposed to sell a pick play better and draw Raiders safety Jeremy Chinn to that side of the end zone, opening up the designed No. 1, which was the Odunze over route into a vert to the post.

B) The read by Williams is one he surely wants back. When Swift and Moore don’t draw Chinn away from the middle of the end zone, the window to Odunze over the linebacker becomes dangerously small. Granted, Williams is capable of that throw, but it’s just not a high percentage play at that point. Honestly, it’s not even a bad read; it’s simply a dangerous one.

C) On Sunday, we saw multiple tipped passes at the line, including this one, which Crosby intercepted. Drew Dalman doesn’t do a good job of knocking Crosby off his spot and making it difficult for him to track that ball behind him and make the catch. When Crosby jumped for the deflection, Dalman should have hit him, limiting the chances of it turning into a turnover.

When Ben Johnson said on Monday that there were some things they put on tape this week that he wasn’t proud of, I’m sure this is one of those things he’s talking about. There’s a lot of bad here, and plenty of players involved in the bad.

Maxx Crosby intercepting Caleb WilliamsI can't even grade Caleb negatively on this play. There is nothing he did wrong. The line didn't do anything wrong either. Caleb looked like he had a nice angle here.This is just an incredible defensive player playing elite level football pic.twitter.com/Ji3BiqsC5H

I had a few plays marked as bad or no-grade during the live watch that I felt differently about yesterday during the film. One of them was this read option in the second quarter that resulted in a Maxx Crosby sack and fumble—that Williams thankfully fell on top of.

The still below is paused at the mesh point, where the ball is in Swift’s chest, but Williams still has his hands on it. In real time, it looked like Williams made the wrong decision on the read. Even watching the clip from the sideline angle looked like he made the wrong decision. But this frame and looking at Crosby make me feel like he could have made either play, and Williams trusted himself more than Swift.

Williams probably should have let Swift try to outrun Crosby from behind, even though Crosby’s first step is so quick and his body was in such a good position for either option, and he would have caught Swift at the line of scrimmage.

But I also don’t blame Williams for having more confidence in himself than Swift. In the end, I’m leaning toward a bad decision, but I’m also questioning the play call in the first place. Running a read option to Crosby’s side of the field doesn’t make much sense.

Believe it or not, I don’t have many more negative marks on Williams this week. Again, Crosby caused so much chaos, and credit to Pete Carroll and the rest of his front seven for stepping up around Crosby, that some of the negative plays were unavoidable.

For me, the most impressive aspect of the game for the offense has to be the in-game adjustments. Whether it be personnel—like moving Theo Benedet to the left side and getting Ozzy Tapilo on the right—or design and coaching, Johnson did a good job scheming more opportunities in the second half, and Williams’ execution was up to par.

Here’s a great example of an in-game adjustment by Johnson and his staff, more specifically, seeing a flaw and coaching it out of Williams, and then Williams being able to take that coaching and execute within the same game. The still below is from the game’s second drive, where Jonah Laulu bats down Williams’ throw. The play is well-designed. It’s a left-right levels concept. Williams has two options on each side, running the same route at different levels. He has to 1) pick a side and 2) read top down from one to two. It’s super simple, and we’ve seen this type of concept work a bunch in the first month of the season.

Williams’ eyes start on the left, but he passes on Odunze, who was open. That’s a bad read. No sugar coating it.

But … and this is a big but … We see something as promising as anything on this tape on the eventual game-winning drive. Johnson brings back the design from the game’s second drive, and Williams corrects his mistake and hooks up with Odunze for a first down and then some to get the Bears into the red zone.

There is really incredible stuff there from Johnson and his staff and Williams. It seems so simple, yet it’s something so foreign to Bears fans, from a coaching and quarterback standpoint, that I can’t help but point it out in this space.

Let’s wrap this week’s conversation up with the clear-cut play of the day:

Caleb Williams stands strong against the 3rd down blitz and delivers a strike to Rome Odunze for the TD pic.twitter.com/ONrp5NXmb5

This was the best throw of this game and probably the best throw of the week, league-wide. The design is excellent, but the footwork, timing, and confidence before the throw make a franchise quarterback, and the laser of a throw makes Williams special.

Check this out from the end zone angle:

I knew the EZ angle of this Caleb WIlliams throw wouldn't disappoint. That's an actual laser beam. t.co/Gz7To7fRuI pic.twitter.com/qPx22YKrss

That is high-level, confident footwork and timing, high-level anticipation—and trust in Odunze—and a plus-plus throw. It doesn’t get better than this, and we’re beginning to see this become a regular occurrence for Williams.

Even in a game where he didn’t play his best, and things around him were chaotic, this growth and instances of high-level quarterback play are still all over the tape. If you’re looking at this game as a step backward from the Dallas game, you’re not really watching the game, or worse yet, you don’t really understand what you’re watching.

Through four weeks, Williams has exceeded my expectations, and I have every reason to believe he’ll be fourish in Ben Johnson’s offense long-term. I’m not sure what else we could ask for from the second-year quarterback at this point.

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