Bears quarterback Caleb Williams is tackled by Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair during Sunday’s game.
AP
Offensive line is clearly not the Bears’ strongest position group, but Week 2 is a little early to start worrying about Caleb Williams’ safety.
Unfortunately, that’s where things stand after Sunday’s inexplicably bad performance against Houston. The obvious concern is not wanting a rookie quarterback to get jumpy in the pocket, not trusting the pass protection.
More games like this one and the situation could progress to a much worse scenario — Williams getting knocked out of games and jeopardizing his career. Besides getting sacked seven times, Williams took a couple hard hits at the sideline with no flags thrown. Justin Fields can attest, NFL referees tend not to protect running quarterbacks.
Watching this game a second time, I expected to pick out some weak spots on the offensive line. Right guard Nate Davis catches a lot of blame as the highest-paid player in the group (by a wide margin). But this was a bad performance across the board. None of the linemen played well and the two tackles were probably the weakest links.
Part of that is personnel-driven. The ugliest of many rotten plays came on the last sack of the night, when Houston’s Danielle Hunter simply juked right tackle Darnell Wright and got a clean hit on Williams.
You might remember Hunter. He used to play for the Vikings and there was talk of interest from the Bears in free-agency. Obviously, he ended up with the Texans and dominated Sunday’s matchup against Wright. Braxton Jones didn’t fare much better on the other side matched against Will Anderson, the No. 3 overall draft pick out of Alabama in 2023.
Just as bad were the numerous false start penalties and inability to pick up any sort of stunt. On one play deep in Bears territory in the second half, all the Texans had to do was blitz a linebacker and drop a lineman into coverage. They sent four rushers against five blockers, but Henry To’oTo’o raced in untouched to force a throwaway. Houston used a stunt to sack Williams on the next play.
For the past couple years, my assessment of the Bears’ offensive line is they’re better at run-blocking than pass-blocking. Well, they couldn’t do either in Houston. Bears running backs combined to gain 27 yards on 17 carries.
Not having fullback Khari Blasingame in uniform hurt the cause, but that’s no excuse for everyone being off their game, from blockers to coaches. Wide runs were getting blown up, many of the screens and quick passes didn’t work, play-action ended up opening rush lanes for the Texans to apply more pressure.
Williams’ stat line was not impressive, but his performance while under constant duress was what kept the Bears in the game until late in the fourth quarter.
A perfect example was his second interception. The Texans rushed four, Hunter blew past Wright, but somehow Williams escaped after Hunter jumped on his back. At that point, all Williams had to do was throw it short to Rome Odunze for an easy 10-yard gain, at least. Instead, he went deep to Cole Kmet against triple coverage and was picked off. Easy fix.
The Bears should have helped the offensive line in the winter by trying to find a way to land an anchor at left tackle, then try playing Jones at guard, where he won’t have to deal with the league’s best pass rushers every game.
Now that the tape is out, expect the Bears to see even more stunts and blitzes during the next few weeks. Time to block before the new QB is broken.