With Monday night's season opener against the Vikings looming, Bears coach Ben Johnson has total confidence in Caleb Williams' ability to operate the offense.
Learning new play calls, verbiage and cadences wasn't an overnight process for the second-year quarterback, especially with a heavy dose of motions and shifts in the playbook. But Williams has made steady progress and appears to be ready for prime time.
"We haven't shied away from the fact that it was going to take some reps and some time and so that's what we had," Johnson said. "Once we got all the installs in over the course of the summer, things started to slow down a little bit for him and we were able to play more with the tempo that we were looking for."
Veteran tight end Cole Kmet believes that the greatest strides Williams has taken this summer have been with his pre-snap process.
"That's continued to grow from April up until now," Kmet said. "I know he's taken a lot of pride in dialing that in and getting it right. A lot of coaches will tell you that a lot of snaps are won before [the ball] is even snapped. So the pre-snap process is huge for all of us, but especially the quarterback position, and Caleb has taken a lot of great steps there."
With Williams' grasp of the offense, Johnson revealed that the Bears intend to use the cadence, motions and shifts as a weapon.
"This day and age in football, it's a huge advantage for the offense when you can use that to attack defenses," Johnson said. "He's done a nice job being able to digest that. We're trying to find that right balancing act for a young player that is still learning some new concepts how much, operationally, we want to put on his plate."
Williams enters the 2025 season looking to build on a promising first NFL campaign during which he registered a 93.8 passer rating and set Bears rookie passing records with 351 completions, 3,541 yards and 20 touchdowns.
The No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 draft also became the first Bears quarterback to start every game in a season since Jay Cutler in 2009. In addition, Williams was one of only four NFL quarterbacks with at least 20 TDs and six or fewer interceptions, joining Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Justin Herbert.
Williams has already benefitted from working with Johnson, who was hired by the Bears after coordinating one of the NFL's most prolific offenses in Detroit. Over the last two seasons, the Lions led the league in points (30.1) and yards (402.2) per game. In 2024, Detroit scored an NFL-leading 68 touchdowns and ranked second with a franchise-record 409.5 yards per game while winning the NFC North title with a 15-2 mark.
"[My] knowledge of football and NFL football has grown even just sitting in some of the meetings this, year and even today and going through our first game week and just understanding things I may not have understood last year," Williams said.
"Whether that's defenses, whether it's offenses, I think I've taken a step there. I have to keep taking those steps throughout this year and many years from now. But Ben, he's been great for me. He's pushed me. Like I've said many times, he's a teacher and he will be persistent until you get it."
Johnson's persistence was evident in training camp when he stopped practice to correct mistakes, helping players to learn from and not repeat their miscues.
"I've got the utmost confidence in Ben: in his coaching ability, his play-calling and all of that," Williams said. "It comes down to being able to execute exactly what he puts out there for us as a team, as an offense. Throughout the week when we're messing up—which is going to happen—we have to get back in the huddle, redo it, so that when it happens on game day, we go out there and execute exactly what he dishes out for us."
Regardless of which plays are called Monday night at Soldier Field, Williams views his role as a distributor in an offense that features receivers DJ Moore, Rome Odunze, Olamide Zaccheaus and Luther Burden III; tight ends Cole Kmet and Colston Loveland and running back D'Andre Swift.
"We need to go out there and do our jobs," Williams said. "We need to run our routes at the right depth. We need to be able to hold up in protection. And I need to be able to deliver the ball, whether it's under pressure or not. Other than that, it's getting the ball out of my hands and allowing our guys to be able to go out there and make plays and be special, which they are."
