It may not be very healthy to be this excited about the upcoming Chicago Bears season in the first week of June, but like a poker player who has been dealt 2-7 offsuit his entire life, now that I have something that looks like a good hand, I'm shoving all my chips to the middle. I don't know if the Bears are going to win the Super Bowl, but they're going to be fun and well-coached, two adjectives that haven't been uttered in Halas Hall in quite some time.
I love the moves general manager Ryan Poles made this offseason. Signing Ben Johnson was a no-brainer, but it's the kind of move the Bears have never been able to pull off before. Trading for Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson addressed the team's biggest shortcoming. Signing Drew Dalman, Dayo Odeyingbo and Grady Jarrett in free agency showed that Poles knew what the Bears needed and went out and got it.
Poles also did outstanding work in the draft, but as excited as I am about Colston Loveland, Luther Burden III and Ozzy Trapilo, it pales in comparison to my expectations for the Bears' second-year players. Rome Odunze is going to light up the league in a bigger role this year, but today, I want to talk about Caleb Williams.
Caleb deserves a medal for the season he was able to put together as a rookie. Saddled with bad coaching and an ineffective and injury-plagued offensive line, he still managed to post a 20-to-6 touchdown-to-interception ratio, and he started every game despite taking a league-high 68 sacks.
With a veteran's sensibility to avoid turnovers and his unique ability to make things happen outside of structure, Caleb has all the requisite tools to become a star in the near future. To really take that next step though, he needs to learn to get rid of the ball sooner.
The offensive line and the abysmal playcalling last year deserve most of the blame for Caleb getting brought down so often, but as he himself has admitted, a fair amount of the sacks he took were his responsibility, as well.
So many of Caleb's sacks occurred because he didn't throw the ball away or he was too slow in making a read, but last year's coaching staff didn't have the wherewithal to coach that bad habit out of him. Caleb was left to his own devices (in more ways than one, as we recently learned that he studied game tape on his own with no direction from Matt Eberflus or Shane Waldron), and he did what had worked his entire life: he tried to make a play. Oftentimes that resulted in him being dragged to the turf.
Caleb won the Heisman Trophy in 2022 in large part because of his ability to make wow plays when he escaped the pocket. His deep-ball accuracy was off the charts, and his arm strength allowed him to make throws across the field that other quarterbacks wouldn't even try. That worked in the Pac-12, but the NFL is a whole different beast. Talent alone isn't enough to succeed, even for a prospect as rare as Caleb.
Ben Johnson's coaching is going to allow Caleb Williams to reach his high ceiling
Seeing the way Eberflus and Waldron handled Caleb was like watching a driver's ed student try to drive a Formula 1 car. These guys couldn't even get their hands to 10 and 2, and for the most part, they didn't even let Caleb out of the garage.
Enter Ben Johnson, who clearly knows what he's doing. Adam Jahns of The Athletic mentioned in his recent minicamp takeaways piece that Caleb hit a checkdown to Roschon Johnson for a first down in a recent 7-on-7 drill, but rather than get a pat on the back from his new coach, he heard some constructive criticism instead.
"“No, he was late,” Johnson said. “He needs to get there faster.” That attitude highlights the kind of coaching that will take Caleb from being a talented quarterback to being a great one. Will that checkdown be a completion if he waits an extra second to throw it? Sometimes. But other times it will be a sack, or it'll be an incompletion because he'll take a hit while trying to get it out.
With the additions of Thuney, Dalman and Jackson, the Bears dramatically upgraded their interior line. They also might have an exciting new left tackle if Trapilo wins the job. That will help Caleb throw for more yards, D'Andre Swift run for more touchdowns, and the offense as a whole sustain more drives and score more points.
That improvement alone will make the Bears offense much better than it was a year ago. So will having Johnson designing and calling the plays. To go from the outhouse of the NFC North to the penthouse, though, it's going to come down to Caleb and his development. If he learns to get rid of the ball and cut down on avoidable sacks, this team is going to be tough to stop, and I won't have gotten this excited in June for nothing. Keep on coaching, Ben. Keep on slinging, Caleb. This season can't get here fast enough.