Acme Packing Company
Last week, the Chicago Bears beat the Cleveland Browns in a pointless game that revealed no new information, unless you were unaware of just how bad Shadeur Sanders is. However, one important thing did happen. Rome Odunze, the Bears’ best big play receiver, was already nursing an injured foot; in the frigid pre-game warmup he exacerbated that injury and on Thursday the Bears ruled him out for Saturday’s rematch with the Green Bay Packers. Luther Burden III, Chicago’s impressive rookie receiver, also was ruled out with an injured ankle, while running back D’Andre Swift popped up on the injury report mid-week with a groin strain and is questionable.
It’s worth monitoring all of these injuries because they directly impact the effectiveness of the worst Bears player, Caleb Williams. If you think it’s unfair to call Williams the worst player on the team, I assure you it is not. Williams is dead last in the league in completion percentage despite a great offensive line, a powerful running attack, and a group of good skill position players. That number is absolutely not a fluke as he is also dead last in Next Gen Stat’s Completion Percentage Over Expected (CPOE) statistic, with an enormous gap between him and the Vikings’ J.J. McCarthy. Yes, Williams does have a few positives, but generally speaking, he is BY FAR the least accurate quarterback in professional football.
Let’s acknowledge those positives. Williams does average a robust 11.8 yards per completion, which ranks seventh among qualifying quarterbacks, but he earned that rank despite a less impressive 5.9 air yards per completion. Whenever you see a robust yards per completion number with a low Air Yards/ADOT number, the gap between the two is necessarily filled by Yards After Catch (YAC), and it’s important to understand the importance of YAC. Generally speaking, YAC is a receiver and schematic statistic, not a quarterback statistic. Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers have been juicing the numbers of mediocre quarterbacks for years by virtue of outstanding playcalling and YAC maestros like George Kittle and Deebo Samuel. Bears head coach Ben Johnson is an outstanding play designer on par with Shanahan, but the Bears may not have their stable of YAC monsters available on Saturday. And if they don’t, Caleb Williams production may completely dry up.
Caleb’s completion percentage on the season is 58%. The Bears’ team leader in YAC and YAC/Reception is Swift, who has caught 70.7% of his passes with an average of 11.2 YAC per catch. Yes, that means Swift is generally catching the ball behind the line of scrimmage, and still producing something close to a first down. The highest YAC from any receiver on the team comes from Luther Burden, who has caught an incredible-for-Caleb 76.6% of his targets for 13.3 yards per reception, 7.1 of which come after the catch. Burden didn’t really start getting regular targets until November 9th, but after never eclipsing four targets in a game prior to that date, he’s had at least [five targets...
