Bears head coach Ben Johnson said on Monday that the 9-3 team is “winning in spite of our passing game” and he understands that it is hard not to associate that thought with the team’s quarterback.
Johnson was clear in his comments that “everybody has a role to play to get this pass game cleaned up,” but he circled back to them at a Tuesday press conference with a focus on quarterback Caleb Williams.
“I think when I made that comment yesterday, it’s easily to construe it as I’m not happy with the quarterback,” Johnson said. “That’s not the case whatsoever. He continues to get better each and every week, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how he played last week.”
Williams is last among qualified quarterbacks in completion percentage this season and isn’t close to the 70 percent number that Johnson set as a preseason goal, but Johnson said that he is not measuring Williams’ performance solely through that lens.
“I know what the stats say,” Johnson said. “Throw those out the window. He’s doing a really good job managing the ballgame and that’s step No. 1 for the quarterback. He’s going to continue to get better. The process is really good right now with how he approaches the week. The way he’s taken the coaching, the way he’s applying the coaching. I’m very pleased with that. I think we’re going to continue to see him ascend whether the stats tell the story or not.”
Johnson’s overall view of Williams and the team’s record are more significant than any individual stat when it comes to how Williams has run the Bears’ offense this season. Taking those two things with where Williams is in his career makes it hard to think there’s any doubt about the quarterback in Chicago.
The Bears won their fifth straight game on Thanksgiving and are at the top of the NFL playoff race with a 9-3 record, but head coach Ben Johnson said that the team is lagging in one significant area.
After Johnson was hired this offseason, he set a goal for quarterback Caleb Williams to complete 70 percent of his passes. Williams has not reached that number in any of the team’s games and he’s completing 58.1 percent of his passes for the season, which is last among the 33 qualified quarterbacks in the league this season.
On Monday, Johnson was asked about Williams’ lack of accuracy in a press conference. He acknowledged that it was a blustery day in Philadelphia last Thursday, but that it is “an area that we are certainly talking about” with the quarterback and everyone else on the offense.
“We gotta fundamentally be correct,” Johnson said. “The primary receiver, when he’s open, we’ve got to make sure we hit him. And then, all of our pass catchers, we just harped on it today, we need to be more disciplined in our route detail. It’s not where it needs to be. Our depth’s not proper all the time. Our steps [aren’t]. Everybody has a role to play to get this pass game cleaned up. It’s not where it needs to be. We’re winning in spite of our passing game, not because of it and none of us are pleased with that right now.”
The Bears have still managed to score the eighth-most points in the league to this point in the season and Williams is below the league average in interception rate with five on 396 pass attempts, so the low completion percentage has not been a major drag on the offense. It will need to improve for Williams to be the kind of quarterback the Bears hope he can become, though, and any uptick over the rest of the season will help the Bears’ chances of playing deep into January.
The Bears’ win over the defending champion Eagles on Friday may have been a statement that they’re serious contenders to some, but quarterback Caleb Williams said no game providess a bigger statement than that the team did its job that week.
The Bears started the season 0-2 but have gone 9-1 since then, and Williams said by winning nine of their last 10 games the Bears have been making statements week in and week out.
“Every single game that we play is to make a statement. And that’s, just another game for us. Focus on being 1-0 each week,” Williams said. “We keep doing that, we keep focusing on what’s inside, the noise inside the building — the statements and all of that, that’s more of the outside noise. The stuff for y’all to talk about, the analysts and whoever to talk about. We’ll keep focusing on ourselves.”
The Bears have five more games on the schedule, including two against the Packers that will likely determine the winner of the NFC North. Williams said they’re looking to do nothing more than keep going 1-0 each week.
After sleepwalking through the first two-and-a-half quarters of Friday’s game, the Eagles’ offense woke up. And the momentum swung fully in Philly’s direction after an interception on Chicago’s next drive.
Down 10-9, the Eagles had the ball at the Bears’ 36. A 15-yard gain from running back Saquon Barkley gave the home team first and 10 from the 21.
Two plays and nine yards later, the Eagles faced third and one. It was time to trot out the tush push. And the end result was a fumble that the Bears recovered.
“I was hoping that [forward progress] was stopped, but it wasn’t,” quarterback Jalen Hurts told reporters after the 24-15 game. “It was kind of similar to the New York game except that they just didn’t blow the whistle as soon. That’s not to point the finger at anyone else. I mean, I have to hold onto the ball. It definitely presents itself as an issue and it always has. It’s just never gotten us and so today it got us and it’s something that we and I need to tighten up.”
Does the tush push sometimes create issues with ball security?
“It’s been like that for a very long time,” Hurts said.
He then was asked whether defenses have figured out how to stop the Eagles’ signature play.
“It’s becoming tougher and tougher,” Hurt said. “But ultimately, me holding onto the ball, that’s something I can control.”
The fact that defenses are doing a better job of stopping the play could take some steam out of the seemingly inevitable renewed push to get it out of the game. If the Eagles make an early playoff exit, that could make a new assault on the play even less of a priority.
If, in the end, the effort to get rid of the tush push is abandoned, it will confirm the simple reality that it was never about safety or aesthetics or difficulty of officiating or anything but taking away from the Eagles something that no other team could stop or replicate.
Trailing the Bears by 15 with 3:10 to play on Friday, the Eagles scored a touchdown. They had a big decision to make.
Kick the extra point and go down by eight, or go for two and trail by seven (if successful) or nine (if not). The Eagles went for two, and they didn’t get it.
After the game, coach Nick Sirianni addressed the decision to go for two when he did.
“Obviously, we had to get one at one point,” Sirianni told reporters. “We had to get a two-point conversion at one point. I’ve done a lot of studies on that in my notes down nine. I’m always going to go for a two in that scenario, so I followed the plan that — again, I don’t try to wing anything in situational football. That’s what I wanted to do. That’s in my notes from my studies in the past, and that’s what we did.
“Now, the thought behind it is you want to know exactly what you need right there. If you go down seven, then obviously it’s a one-score game. If you go down eight, I know it’s a one-score game as well. That’s what we do in that scenario. I’ll always go back and look and reconsider things. Had three timeouts there to be able to potentially kick it deep there if we did get it. Obviously, we didn’t in that particular case, but at some point, you’re going to need it and I always want to know early what I need going forward.”
Another factor is the wind. Kicker Jake Elliott had already missed an extra point. The 33-year, one-point kick is never a gimme, especially on a blustery day.
Then there’s the possibility of going for two, getting it, scoring another touchdown, and going for two again, with the possibility of bypassing overtime.
The bigger issue than the decision was the play. Receiver A.J. Brown had just caught a touchdown pass, his second of the day. He was lined up wide to the right, with single coverage. The no-brainer move was to throw a fade to Brown and let him go get it.
That’s always the most important aspect of the two-point decision. If you go for it, you need to have a good play. A play that will work. On Friday, the play that was called and executed did not work.
