THE FINALE!!

Rookie Variability

So far in this series, we’ve seen that Caleb Williams was generally a sub-par passer in his rookie season, and he particularly struggled with deep accuracy and letting too many pressures turn into sacks. One thing we haven’t given much thought to, however, is how much the inconsistency around him may have impacted his performance and development. Chicago went through two head coaches and three offensive coordinators during the season, and it’s not hard to imagine that chaos may have made life difficult on a rookie QB.

In order to see if the data suggests this was the case, I broke Williams’ season up into a number of segments that matched key off-field moments during the season:

• Weeks 1-3: The start of the year.
• Weeks 4-6: After week three, offensive leaders had a meeting with then offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and asked for him to be more aggressive in his coaching. This period starts immediately after that meeting and runs until the bye.
• Weeks 8-10: After the bye, Waldron reverted back to early season form, and he was fired after week 10.
• Weeks 11-13: Thomas Brown’s time as the offensive coordinator.
• Weeks 14+: Thomas Brown’s time as the head coach, with Chris Beatty serving as offensive coordinator.

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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General Overview

Let’s start with a general look at how Williams performed against man and zone coverage in 2024. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

Before we get into the data, a quick caveat: PFF doesn’t publicly show this data by QB, but instead by pass catcher. I manually compiled it team by team to do comparisons, but it doesn’t include all throws. This accounts for a little over 80% of Williams’ total pass attempts; it for sure does not include throwaways with no pass target (which PFF says were about 10% of Caleb’s throws), and I would imagine also does not include some screens where the play developed too quickly to determine the coverage.

With that said, the table below shows how Williams fared throwing against both man and zone compared to the NFL average (I couldn’t do the usual NFL high/medium/low since this wasn’t split up by QB).

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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Under Pressure

We’ve already seen that Caleb Williams was under pressure pretty frequently, so how did he hold up when that happened?

The table below shows how Williams performed in a wide variety of statistics when kept clean (blue) vs. pressured (orange), and also includes Williams’ rank (in parentheses) out of 34 total NFL QBs who had at least 250 pass attempts. Information on the spread of all NFL QBs is also provided for each stat. Cells highlighted in green indicate Williams was among the top 25% of QBs in this category, while those in red indicate Williams was in the bottom 25% of QBs. A further explanation of big time throws and turnover worthy plays was given in the play action article; generally, more big-time throws is good, and more turnover-worthy plays is bad. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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Pressure Frequency

As we already noted in the first part of this series, Caleb Williams was sacked 68 times this year, the highest value in the NFL by a wide margin. So today, I want to try and figure out who is to blame for that, which will help give insight into how the Bears can fix it going forward.

The table below shows how frequently every position was blamed for giving up pressure on the QB. Williams’ stats are shown, with context provided by giving his rank compared to 34 NFL QBs with 250+ pass attempts, plus the best, average, and worst marks for that sample. Any values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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In part one, we saw that Caleb Williams generally struggled as a passer during his rookie season, and part two revealed that most of those struggles came on deeper passes. Today, we’ll continue diving deeper into Williams’ statistical profile to try and figure out where improvement is most needed going forward.

Play Action

Let’s start by looking at how Caleb Williams did on play-action drop backs compared to standard passing plays. Before I present the full data, I want to briefly explain two PFF stats that will be used:

• Big Time Throw. These are best described as a pass with excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field and/or into a tighter window. In other words, these are really good, difficult passes that should result in highly valuable big plays. A higher % here is better.
• Turnover Worthy Play. These include fumbles in the pocket, interceptions thrown, and interceptable passes that were not caught. A lower % here is better.

Both of these stats will admittedly have some subjectivity, but they provide a useful glimpse into how frequently a QB makes a really good play vs. a really bad one.

The table below shows how Williams performed in a wide variety of statistics in play action (orange) vs. other dropbacks (blue), and also includes Williams’ rank (in parentheses) out of 34 total NFL QBs who had at least 250 pass attempts. Information on the spread of all NFL QBs is also provided for each stat. Cells highlighted in green indicate Williams was among the top 25% of QBs in this category, while those in red indicate Williams was in the bottom 25% of QBs. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

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Yesterday we saw that Caleb Williams generally struggled as a passer during his rookie season. Today we’re going to dive deeper into those stats to see if we can figure out where it all went wrong.

Sorting By Depth

Let’s look at how frequently and effectively Williams targeted each depth of the field.

The table below shows information splitting the field into four areas, which I will refer to as behind the line, short (0-9 yards), medium (10-19 yards), and deep (20+ yards downfield). Williams’ pass frequency, accuracy, completion percentage, and yards/attempt are shown, as well as how he ranked compared to 34 NFL QBs with at least 250 pass attempts. The best, average, and worst value from around the NFL is given, and any areas where Williams was in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while areas in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

[Quick note: I realize the numbers for frequency don’t add up to 100%, but this is PFF’s data, and it’s the same data for everybody, so I’m just rolling with it for a fair comparison. My guess is that they are excluding throwaway passes that didn’t have a clearly defined target, which account for the missing percentage.]

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How good was Caleb Williams as a rookie?

Expectations were sky high for Chicago’s signal caller after they drafted him with the #1 overall pick, added playmakers like Keenan Allen, Gerald Everett, D’Andre Swift, and Rome Odunze to the offense, and tapped Shane Waldron, one of the most highly regarded offensive coordinators on the market, to lead the unit. Many in the media argued that Williams was stepping into a historically good situation for a QB selected #1 overall.

Offseason optimism quickly turned into a real-life dumpster fire, however.

• Gerald Everett was clearly washed up and managed only 36 receiving yards (this should not have been a surprise).
• Keenan Allen spent a good chunk of the season looking washed up and had arguably the worst healthy season of his career.
• DJ Moore, fresh off a career season and monster extension, spent much of the year looking disinterested in playing football and had one of the worst seasons of his career.
• Chicago’s offensive line saw ten players play at least 100 snaps while giving up a league-worst 68 sacks.
• Chicago cycled through two head coaches and three offensive coordinators.

Through all this chaos, Caleb Williams somehow managed to start all 17 games, playing all but 13 offensive snaps, and threw for 3,541 yards, with 20 touchdowns to 6 interceptions. He even added 489 rushing yards, bringing him over 4,000 yards from scrimmage on the season. Pretty good, right?

Those are all volume numbers, but don’t say all that much about how well a player actually performed. In this series, we’re going to dive into Williams’ advanced statistical profile to see what he did well, where he struggled, and what insights we can glean about his future.

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Right before the 2020 season, I wrote an article about how Ryan Pace had mortgaged the Bears’ future foolishly, chasing a contention window that had already closed. The sentences that ended that piece: “The 2020 Bears should be a pretty good team. Fans would be wise to enjoy that, because 2021 and beyond don’t look as though they’ll be quite as much fun.”

Five years later, I wish I had been wrong, and I suppose I was wrong about 2020. That vintage went 8-8 and was not particularly good. But the four seasons since have been downright miserable. During that stretch, the Bears have:

• Finished 21-47, the 2nd worst record in the NFL.
• Finished 5-19 in the division, averaging barely more than one win in six attempts per season against their main rivals.
• Suffered through two losing streaks of at least ten games, the only such streaks in the 100+ year history of the franchise.
• Cycled through three head coaches.
• Been outscored by a cumulative 312 points.

Besides losing a lot, the offense has been a particularly brutal experience. In the last four years, that unit has:

• Averaged only 19.2 points per game, ranking an average of 24th in the NFL each year.
• Allowed 229 sacks, the most in the NFL in that span by over TEN sacks. (They’ve ranked in the bottom 7 in sacks allowed all four seasons.)
• Cycled through five offensive coordinators, the best of whom could charitably be described as adequate.
• Spawned seemingly a million film studies about how the offense lacked any sort of clear plan or cohesion.
• Made me scream at my TV in frustration roughly 25 times per game due to a stupid mistake you don’t expect a varsity high school team to make (not getting the play call in on time, running the 14th WR screen in a row, getting conservative as soon as they get into long field goal range, etc.).

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Mercifully, the 2024 season has finally come to an end. Now we turn our attention to the offseason, where Chicago will look to hire a new head coach, while attempting to build a quality roster around rising second-year QB Caleb Williams. I’ll have in-depth analysis on Williams and other returning players later in the offseason, but for now, I want to take a look at where the roster currently stands. Let’s examine:

• What the Bears’ depth chart looks like as of today.
• Which Chicago impact players are set to hit free agency.
• What Chicago’s salary cap situation looks like.
• Bears players that could be considered for cuts or extensions.

Current Depth Chart

Let’s start by looking at the 34 players the Bears currently have under contract for the 2025 season, shown in a rough depth chart below.

(Side note: Click on the image to view in full if it doesn’t show up properly. Sorry for any formatting issues.)

A few thoughts:

• At first glance, the biggest hole is obviously on the offensive line, where the Bears only have four guys under contract. Three of those players are tackles, so the interior, with only Ryan Bates currently signed, is basically a blank slate. This was easily the weakest position group on the roster in 2024, and the Bears will need to add three new starters here this offseason.

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Earlier this offseason, I examined Chicago’s pass rush, and this week I want to shift gears to focus on the other part of pass defense: coverage. We started with CB, looked at LB yesterday, and today we’ll finish by examining the safeties.

Side note: If you read either of the last 2 articles, this one will follow the exact same format and have identical table setup, so hopefully the familiarity makes digesting all of the data a little easier. 

Basic Coverage Stats

Let’s start with a basic look at coverage stats for Chicago’s safeties last year. There were 85 S with 250+ coverage snaps, or 2.7 per team, which makes a convenient threshold for starting players since some teams deploy 3 safety nickel looks fairly frequently. Chicago had 3 safeties qualify in 2023: Eddie Jackson, Jaquan Brisker, and Elijah Hicks. They also signed two more players this offseason who qualified in Kevin Byard (spent 2023 with Titans and Eagles) and Jonathan Owens (spent 2023 with Packers), so we’ll examine their coverage metrics as well.

• Ranks compared to the 85 S in the sample are given in parentheses, and for a little context, 43rd would be exactly in the middle.
• Those in the top 25% (21st or better) are highlighted in green.
• Those in the bottom 25% (65th or worse) are highlighted in red.
• All data for this article is from Pro Football Focus (PFF).

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