You can say that NFL preseason games don’t mean a lot, and you won’t get much of an argument here or anywhere, other than in a coach’s darkened film room.
But even though exhibition games don’t solve the world’s problems, they can tell you things you already know, good and bad. They can reaffirm.
Caleb Williams’ sizable abilities were on display Saturday in his preseason debut as a Chicago Bear. If he wasn’t everything the team and its fans had hoped for, he was a lot of it. All of the hope that has been bound up in him by a quarterback-needy city found a celebratory outlet in a very good performance against the Bills. He completed four of seven passes for 95 yards and had a 101.8 passer rating. He ran one time, a scramble for 13 yards.
Basically, everything an invested observer would have wanted to see in the rookie was there, and, as a bonus, the offensive line that reportedly was a beat-up question mark kept him sack free.
Nice. Bears fans could use some nice in their lives.
But those of us who believe that maybe, just maybe, Williams is the answer to the Bears’ decades-old problem weren’t surprised by the outcome. Nor did we see Saturday’s performance as proof of anything substantial. We saw it as a continuation of an upward trajectory for the kid. And we leave open the possibility that there will be turbulence ahead. Maybe even some severe wind shear.
Saturday’s offering is what a reasonable person would expect from the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. An unrealistic person, the kind of person who sleeps in a Bears onesie at night, might have expected a touchdown pass or two instead of two drives that led to field goals. Sweet dreams, my friend.
Remember what I said about the ability of preseason games to reveal things? Leopards don’t change their spots, sources say, so while Williams was being good over the weekend, a couple of former Bears quarterbacks were being exactly what they were in Chicago.
Across the field from Williams in Orchard Park, N.Y., Mitch Trubisky was himself. He completed 10 of 18 passes for 82 yards, giving him a measly 4.6-yard average per attempt. He didn’t throw an interception yet finished with a 67.4 passer rating. In short, that’s Mitch.
The previous night, Justin Fields, Williams’ predecessor in Chicago, completed five of six passes for 67 yards and had a 113.2 passer rating in a Steelers loss to the Texans, but was part of two fumbled snaps. Those snaps very well could have been the result of shoddy work by the center, but that’s not the point. The point, as any clear-thinking Bears fan knows, is that these things happen regularly to Fields. He fumbled 38 times in three seasons here, including a league-leading 16 times in 2022.
I mention all of this not to pile on Trubisky and Fields even more but to point out what seems to be the obvious: that Williams is different. He’s different from the two whiffs before him and he very well might be different from any quarterback the Bears have had before. I know it’s ridiculously early. I also know that getting this enthused about a quarterback so soon in Chicago is a fool’s game.
And, yet, here we are.
It’s wise to ignore Bears coaches and players when they gush about their quarterback. We learned that with Trubisky and Fields, who led the league in plaudits thrown their way. So you might want to take receiver DJ Moore’s descriptions of Williams’ play Saturday – “outstanding,’’ “amazing” and “second to none” – with a grain of salt.
But Williams didn’t sound as if he was too caught up in his performance, probably because he’s been here before. Not in an NFL game, of course, but on an athletic field where his abilities can’t help but stand out.
After Saturday’s game, he spoke of learning from his mistakes and successes. And moving on.
“We take a step back, we go through the tape and then on to the next,’’ he said. “On to the next preseason [game] and then you take it from there and you keep growing, keep growing, keep growing and you just keep counting those days, counting those hours and get after it.”
Growing and growing and growing. Sort of like the excitement surrounding him.