Caleb Williams' 2024 Season: Better Than You Think

There’s a perception out there that Caleb Williams had a bad rookie season. That’s likely due to the fact that we’ve seen so many outstanding 1st-year performances in recent memory, like Jayden Daniels last year and C.J. Stroud the year before.

While I wouldn’t say that Williams was phenomenal by any means, he did a lot of good things considering his situation.

The Bears had no running game to speak of. Their O-line often looked like a collection of turnstiles. There was a mid-season firing of the offensive coordinator followed by the head coach a few weeks later.

And still, Williams managed to finish the season with a 20-6 TD-INT ratio, which is the best of any QB in Bears history (minimum 250 attempts). That TD-INT ratio was 18-2 over his final 14 games and 11-1 over his final 7.

He also used his athleticism to pick up 489 yards on the ground.

Don’t get me wrong, Williams is still very much a work in progress. But he’s a talented work in progress, and one who showed improvement throughout last season.

I expect him to make a big jump in Ben Johnson’s offense in 2025.

Playing Too Fast

The thing that stood out most about Williams, particularly early last season, was how jittery he seemed. He looked like he had chugged 2 liters of Mountain Dew before every offensive series.

That impacted his ability to put the ball where he wanted to, often because he put too much juice on his throws:

This was uncharacteristic based on what I saw in college. The USC version of Williams was one who could put the ball wherever he wanted and make any type of throw. The one in Chicago looked like a closer in baseball trying to show off his arm with no ability to throw any off-speed pitches.

His pocket presence was also impacted by how jumpy he was. This was an area where he struggled in college, and it carried over into the first half of his rookie season.

Williams often moved when he didn’t need to. Sometimes, that brought him into pass rushers and actually created pressure that otherwise wouldn’t have been there.

You could see it on this play. The unnecessary movement up in the pocket brought him into pressure and made him feel like he needed to rush this throw. Once again, he put too much on it as a result:

That’s as wide open as it gets in the NFL.

Williams also wasn’t great at moving and resetting or maintaining his throwing base when he did have to move. That led to some inaccurate throws to open receivers:

Watch his feet get too close together on this next example as he slid left to avoid pressure. You could see he was off balance just enough for this throw to miss its target:

The nuances of playing the position weren’t on display throughout much of the season for Williams.

Holding the Ball Too Long

This was arguably Williams’ biggest issue in college. During his final season at USC, he was sacked 33 times in 12 games (a 47-sack pace in 17 games). That would have made him one of the most-sacked quarterbacks in the NFL in 2023.

So it should come as no surprise that when Williams got to the NFL, he instantly became the most-sacked quarterback in the league, and by a wide margin. Williams was taken down 68 times last season. The next closest was C.J. Stroud with 52 sacks.

As mentioned earlier, a part of that was certainly the Bears’ O-line. But a big part of it was also Williams holding the ball way too long way too often.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s a talented scrambler with high-level evasiveness and he can make plays few others can on the run:

But that’s a skill that needs to come as a last resort or a next-to-last resort. Otherwise, the offense will have no rhythm and spend too much time behind the chains. And that was the case throughout the 2024 season.

Just take this example from the Bears’ Week 12 loss to the Vikings. This was a 2nd-and-9 on their first possession of overtime:

Throw that ball in the flat. Throw it in the stands. Do not take a 17-yard sack!

But that’s what Williams did, killing the drive. The Bears were forced to punt it away. The Vikings would now only need a field goal to win the game, which they ultimately got.

Here are some more examples. This was a 2nd-and-Goal from the 15-yard line against the Panthers in Week 5. Williams was looking left initially and had his receiver open. I don’t know why he didn’t take this throw and set up a more manageable 3rd down. Instead, he pulled it down, danced a bit, drank some more of that Mountain Dew, bounced around the pocket, and then threw an incompletion to set up 3rd-and-15:

I didn’t show the whole play there because the GIF was too large to load. That’s how long he held the ball.

Here’s one more example. This was a 1st-and-10 with 56 seconds left in the first half of the Bears’ Week 9 loss to the Cardinals. Chicago had all 3 timeouts remaining. Just keep the offense moving forward. Don’t kill your chance for a touchdown or a field goal by going backwards.

Of course, Williams held onto the ball and took a sack despite an open check-down right in front of him:

The Bears would luckily get a field goal out of this drive. But this play killed their chances of getting 6.

There was just too much of this throughout the season.

Williams simply needs to play with more timing and rhythm. He needs to commit to prioritizing getting the ball out of his hands and managing the situations of the game.

As you’ll see below, there were signs of him turning that corner.