Caleb Williams Week 2 QB Grade: Bears @ Lions

Well, the Chicago Bears got absolutely punched in the mouth by the Detroit Lions on Sunday. A Lions offense that didn’t score a single offensive touchdown until the very last play of Week 1 came out firing, scoring early and often in a 52–21 gut punch during Ben Johnson’s return to Detroit. To make matters worse, it looks like we may have lost our best defensive player for the season, losing Jaylon Johnson to a groin injury.

Now that we got the heavy stuff out of the way… what did we learn this week from Caleb Williams and the Bears passing attack? Honestly, quite a bit, and a lot of it’s encouraging. For starters, through two weeks, Ben Johnson’s system has the Bears’ passing game sitting as a top-10 unit in explosive passing play.

Something I also liked to do last season was benchmark, to see how he’s progressing and/or regressing (hopefully not!)

Benchmarks

(Season Averages in Italics)

C/A: 21/35 (60.0%) | 19/30 (63.3%)

Yards: 225 | 2.07

aDOT: 7.8 | 9.5

Touchdowns: *2 | 2

Turnovers: 0 | 1

QB at Fault Sacks: *1 | 2

Passer Rating: 86.6 | 91.9

True Passer Rating: 112.0 | 127.5

Time to Throw: 3.20s | 2.97s

Time to Pressure: 2.54s | 2.77s

Pressure Rate: 30.43% | 27.50%

Poor Play Rate / Big Play Rate: 26.1% PPR / 8.7% BPR | 9.3% PPR / 4.7% BRP

Game Notes

The full grading sheet for each play can be found here.

Last week we took a look at plays that Caleb Williams potentially passed over an open receiver and charted those plays and their outcomes. I took count of 8 plays last week for 17.4% passed over rate. This week, I kept the same count and only noticed 3 such plays:

• Q1, 1st & 10 at DET 48 – Passed up DJ Moore, throws incomplete to Rome Odunze. Moore was running a 20-yard dig.
• Q4, 3rd & 15 at CHI 37 – Passed up Olamide Zaccheaus, throws complete to Rome Odunze for 37 yards and a first down. Zaccheaus was running a 15-yard dig.
• Q4, 2nd & 2 at DET 20 – Passed up Cole Kmet, then took a 5-yard sack. Kmet was running a 5-yard out.

That works out to just a 6.9% rate, nearly an 11% drop from Week 1.

This week I also put special focus on “on-target” throws. By definition, an on-target throw is one that would have hit the receiver’s location if not for a drop or a perfectly timed defensive play (like a tip, deflection, or interception). In other words, this is a pure accuracy measure; it evaluates the quarterback’s throw, not the final result. With all the talk about accuracy concerns after Week 1, I wanted to get a clearer picture of where things stand after Week 2. In the full grading sheet, you’ll notice an asterisk (*) in the “Note” column; this marks a throw I’ve denoted as on-target.

For Week 2,...