CHICAGO (WGN) — It’s not just Caleb Williams who has leveled up for the Chicago Bears, although he plays a large part in the overall equation.
Throughout the first five weeks of the NFL season, Bears head coach Matt Eberflus has consistently coined the term “level up” or “leveling up” when describing what the coaching staff has asked him to do, and how he has improved with a growing workload week-by-week.
But to say the game Chicago put together Sunday was a product by and large of Williams’ performance would be disingenuous.
The reason the Bears put up 424 total yards on offense in a 36-10 pounding of the Carolina Panthers was not just because Williams was Superman (even if it is his self-proclaimed nickname) — it was a four-part equation that also included his wide receivers, the run game and the performance of his offensive line as variable’s alongside the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.
Caleb Williams and the level up
Eberflus was asked about how fast Williams could pick up the offense on the first day Chicago reported for training camp, which set the stage for his use of the term “level up.”
“That’s the level up for him this summer, he’s done a really good job with that, studying. Shane [Waldron] and those guys put together a really good program for him to study and level up that way,” Eberflus said at the time. “I just texted him a couple minutes ago about looking for improvement from the first practice to the fourth practice.
“We’ll take a day off and we’ll assess where he is, and then we’ll do the same thing for the next stack of practices. If we look back when we get to the 50 days and we’re at the opener, he’s going to be from here (*holding his hand low*), then he’s going to be all the way here (*holding his hand high*).”
Over those 50 days, Williams and the Bears blazed through training camp and their preseason slate of games.
Chicago went 4-0 and outscored their opponents by 68 points once things were all said and done. Their preseason point differential was the highest since the 2013 Seattle Seahawks (who won the Super Bowl), and the Bears were the sixth team since 2009 to have a preseason point differential of 60-plus. The five other teams to achieve that feat also made the playoffs, per CBS Sports.
Watching Williams and the Monsters of the Midway during the 2024 preseason was like watching David versus Goliath, but instead of having a slingshot, David rode off into battle aboard an Apache attack helicopter that laid waste to Goliath in seconds, and all the display of firepower did was raise expectations higher than they already were.
In a city where scoring points fueled by quarterback play is scarce, the eye-popping plays doused gasoline over the fires of expectation ahead of the regular season, but the directive from Bears command was simple.
Lead when you can, but lean on your veterans when you can’t.
“I’m going to do whatever I need to do for my team to win,” Williams said before Week 1 against the Tennessee Titans. “If that’s handing the ball off, leaning on my guys, [it’s that]. If that’s dropping back and throwing the ball 30 times, it’s doing that. It’s [about] leaning on my talent and trying to not do anything special.”
“He’s got guys around him that have played a lot of years and again, he’s a rookie,” Eberflus added ahead of Week 1. “So, he’s just been leaning on those guys and getting the ball to those guys so they can do their work.”
Finding the balance between leading and leaning on those around him has seen Williams go through a number of developmental stages in Chicago’s first five games.
At first, Williams was tasked with limiting turnovers to help his team win — the essence of Weeks 1-through-3, where he threw for less than 100 yards with no turnovers in a win against Tennessee, but turned the ball over five times (4 interceptions, 1 fumble lost) across two losses to the Houston Texans and Indianapolis Colts.
The former USC Trojan bounced back and then some in Week 4, where Williams played turnover-free football while adding another tool to his bag — beating the blitz.
Using pressure to get to rookie quarterbacks isn’t a new phenomenon, and teams haven’t been shy about holding his face to the fire. If Weeks 3-through-5 were a metaphorical blitz Oreo cookie, Week 4 represented the cream (the best part of an Oreo) where Williams figured it out.
Opposing teams blitzed the Bears’ offense at least 30% of the time across all three games, but in Week 4 against the Los Angeles Rams, Williams posted a 124.6 quarterback rating under pressure on his way to playing another game of turnover-free football, despite being pressured nearly 20% more than he was one week earlier.
Then against the Panthers on Sunday, Williams turned in another clean sheet in the turnover department while beating the blitz for a second consecutive week, where he finished 8/10 for 128 yards and a touchdown when throwing under pressure.
If playing turnover-free football was the hammer, beating the blitz was a carton of nails, and the third tool Williams added to his bag was a screwdriver that helped him hit the deep ball with DJ Moore for the first time this year in Week 5.
The connection with DJ Moore
Williams and Moore both expressed frustrations after not being able to link up against the Rams.
Before Sunday against Carolina, the two struggled to connect on throws downfield. Williams was 5/29 (17%) with three picks on passes of 15-plus air yards through Week 4, where he ranked in the basement of qualified NFL quarterbacks.
The two never exchanged words publicly and their frustrations felt more like going through growing pains than anything that would amount to confrontation.
But still, a solution was needed and Moore ended up blaming himself, putting the onus of getting on the same page on him rather than his rookie QB.
Behind closed doors, Williams and Moore clearly figured it out because the two were in lockstep on Sunday.
“Having a special player like that on your team, you obviously want to give him the ball, let him just be DJ and be special,” Williams said after the game. “It felt really good. We were super excited. We got to the sideline and we were both like, ‘Finally, we were able to hit something like that.’“
Williams and Moore connected on touchdown passes of 34 and 30 yards, and Williams finished his day 4/4 for 108 yards and 2 TD passes on throws of 15-plus air yards downfield.
“It took five weeks to get the down-the-field pass game going,” Moore said When it hits, it hits, and it was good today.”
The home runs the two hit Sunday headlined a budding relationship between Williams and his receivers in general.
Week 5 was the second consecutive week where he connected on passes with at least a half-dozen receivers — seven in Week 4 and six in Week 5.
“I think he understands this is a process and there’s a lot to learn here,” Cole Kmet said of Williams after beating the Panthers. “He’s done a good job of coming in the building and doing what he has to do.”
The running backs
While Williams and the wide receivers found their groove, D’Andre Swift and Roschon Johnson have caught their strides as well.
“It was kind of building off last week. just kept the ball rolling,” Johnson said after Chicago’s win in Week 5. “Dialing up in the pass game having success there kind of opened up the run game too so, I hope we keep building.
“I’ve always been a back that complimented [Swift]. I love understanding him and his style, seeing that work and kind of [building] my thing as well. I think it throws the defense off balance a little bit, keeps them guessing.”
A big part of Waldron’s offense is finding success with outside zone runs and being able to execute in short-yardage situations to counterbalance the passing game, which naturally ascribes roles to Swift and Johnson.
The NFL is a two-running back league. The teams that find the most success are the ones who have a yin to their yang in the backfield (every team who has a David Montgomery needs a Jahmyr Gibbs, and vice-versa) and that has been the case for the Bears’ backfield over their last two games.
Sunday marked the second consecutive week Swift registered 120-plus total yards of offense and a touchdown, while Johnson marked his second consecutive week of punching in a rushing TD from the goal line.
And while Swift and Johnson got things going alongside Williams and Chicago’s receiving core, none of that would have happened if it weren’t for another position group finally getting their act together.
Penalties and the O-Line
The foundation of any good team starts with winning in the trenches, and that’s especially true along the offensive line.
Playing football without winning in the trenches is like trying to make spaghetti with no pasta, eating ice cream without a spoon, or putting ketchup on a hot dog — impossible, messy and just plain wrong.
Week 5 represented the level-up Chicago needed from their offensive line because beforehand, if there was anything handicapping this offense, it was penalties and the play of their linemen.
Through their first four games, the Bears’ offense racked up 28 penalties for 210 yards, exactly half of which were called on offensive linemen.
When they weren’t getting called for false starts or an illegal formation, yellow flags were flying for offensive holding and illegal blindside blocks.
Sunday, Chicago was called for four penalties on offense for 33 yards — tied for the fewest penalties with their fewest penalty yards of the season — on top of having their best pass-blocking day of the year.
According to Pro Football Focus, four out of five Bears starting linemen posted pass-blocking grades (PBG) of 82.8 or higher, with Bill Murray earning an 85.7 PBG in relief of Teven Jenkins after he exited the game with an ankle injury.
All things considered, when you have a QB who doesn’t commit turnovers, beats the blitz and hits on deep balls to his top target, things tend to look up. Prospects rise even higher when the run game is established behind a line that trims down their penalties and transforms their blocking, all leading to season-high numbers in points scored and total yards.
“Like I said, [it’s] just the evolution of where [Williams] is, where the offense is,” Eberflus said last Wednesday. “I think guys are playing well around him [and] it’s still important — that always is important for us — to do that defensively, special teams and at the skill [positions], and also at the line level on offense.”
I’d call that leveling-up coach.