Caleb Williams Week 18 QB Grade: Bears vs. Lions

The script may be out on the Chicago Bears defense.

2 of the last 3 weeks has seen the Bears have just 3 drives in the first have, and over the last 3 games opposing offenses have focused on long, sustained drives, keeping the ball out of Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears’ hands on offense. The Detroit Lions held a 35:45 to 24:15 time of possession advantage over the Bears, churning out 26 first down, 433 yards, and gaining 6.0 yards per play, limiting the Bears’ top 10 offense chances with the ball.

But two touchdowns in the 4th quarter, including back-to-back 2-point conversions had the Bears in a dead heat with the Lions. But much like last week in Santa Clara, it came down to the last possession, this time it was the Lions running the clock down and hitting a game winning 42-yards field goal as time expired to earn the season sweep over the Bears in a game that was ultimately made not important due to the Washington Commanders defeating the Philadelphia Eagles 24-17, securing the 2nd seed in the NFC for the Bears, granting them at minimum 2 home games in the playoffs (assuming a wildcard round victory.)

Bears rookie Tackle Ozzy Trapilo was a game time scratch, thrusting Theo Benedet into the starting roll, and the absence was felt as the Bears focused on a more quick passing game, which worked well on it’s own, even opening up a deep shot touchdown to Jahdae Walker by taking advantage of aggressive safeties (we’ll cover that in our play breakdowns.)

The feeling I’m getting for our Wildcard matchup with the Packers is that we need to hit the ground running early, our second matchup with the Packers saw a very good opening drive go for naught due to a failed trick play and the seemed to sap any early momentum the Bears had.

Here’s to hoping the rubber match proves different.

Very quickly before we get into metrics and our play breakdowns just a quick announcement. Now that we’ve reached the end of the regular season, I will still be grading any playoff games we play, but in addition to that I will be doing a large scale breakdown of the entire season once we reach the end of it (hopefully that’s 5 weeks from now.)

So stay tuned for that, to find out where all of this has lead us!