Windy City Gridiron
In February, I wrote an article titled — Expect more play-action for Caleb Williams in 2025 from Ben Johnson — to explain how much play-action passing was a cheat code for teams and how excited I was that Ben Johnson would be coaching my favorite team.
Johnson’s offense is his own creation. He’s not a part of the McVay or Shanahan tree, which is littered throughout the league. He developed his philosophy under several offensive coaches, including former Bear John Shoop, and while we didn’t know exactly how his Chicago offense would look, we knew he’d want to do two things: run the ball and have a play-action scheme that makes sense.
That has come to fruition in 2025.
As the offensive coordinator with the Detroit Lions, Johnson’s team ranked fourth, first, and first in play-action pass attempts from 2022 to 2024.
Johnson’s overall scheme in Chicago would be built around Caleb Williams’ skill set and the Bears’ personnel, but his philosophy would remain intact.
The Bears stunk last year at running the ball. They ranked 25th in rushing yards and were 29th in yards per attempt. But even with how bad they were at running, Caleb Williams was 29% better in passing yards per attempt (YPA) on play action passes as opposed to his other pass attempts. In fact, most quarterbacks saw an increase in their YPA when running play action. Even the worst team in the league at running the ball saw an uptick in their passing efficiency on play-action passes.
Being able to run the ball successfully has no bearing on play-action success, as evidenced by Chicago’s 2024 offense and countless league-wide studies. If you marry your play-action with your running game, and if all 11 players are deceptive, you’ll create false steps or second-guessing by the defense to give the offense the advantage.
Last season, even though Williams was better on play action, Chicago’s offensive coordinators didn’t call it much, as Williams ranked just 20th in play-action pass attempts.
But not this year.
So far, Caleb is tied for third in the league with 82 passes on play action, and his 692 passing yards on play action passes are the fifth most. In 17 games last season, he had 85 play-action passes, and he threw for 626 yards on those.
Once again, Williams’ passing yards per attempt on play action passes are higher this season (8.4) than on all other passes (6.8).
Part of the deception of play action is taking snaps under center, and if you’ve listened to any Bears’ broadcasts this season, you’ve probably heard an analyst or two talk about how more frequently Caleb Williams is doing that. There’s more for a defense to think about when a quarterback is lined up under center as opposed to in shotgun. A QB setting up in shotgun has some benefits, but effectiveness in play-action is not one of them. A quarterback under center helps the running game, too.
Williams’ athleticism adds an extra dimension to...
