Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams struggled during his first training camp under Ben Johnson and the new coaching staff in 2025. It wasn’t a surprise. The head coach intentionally threw tons of information at him from the very beginning, feeding him “through a firehose.” His goal was to get Williams used to the vast amounts of data he’d have to process during offensive drives. The faster this was accomplished, the more dangerous the offense would become. It wasn’t pretty at first.
Williams had trouble getting out of the huddle on time. There were pre-snap penalties and incorrect alignments. It was rough. However, the quarterback forged ahead, determined to make it work. Fast forward a year, and even those inside Halas Hall are stunned by the progress he’s made. It isn’t just that he looks more comfortable in the pocket and gets the ball out on time. The truly exciting part is what he’s doing before the snap. Williams has graduated to grandmaster, moving teammates around like chess pieces and putting the defense on its heels. Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports caught details of it from teammates and coaches.
Caleb Williams’ leadership has become impossible to question.
And that has come through more subtly at the line of scrimmage, from Williams waving a receiver off and guiding his teammates into the correct run play on one wide-zone call, Bagent said, to Williams baiting the Bears’ defense into biting on a dummy identification, according to offensive coordinator Press Taylor.
“It’s like, ‘Man, we could never operate at that level [a year ago],'” Taylor told Yahoo Sports. “Towards the end of last year, probably the last four or five games, we had a couple free plays that was starting to show his grasp of the cadence. And then now it’s like, all right, let’s mix these in practice a lot more. Let’s get everybody on board with this.
“That felt like his growth.”
What Williams is doing is easily the hardest skill for a QB.
Learning proper footwork in the pocket, throwing with anticipation, and understanding when to take checkdowns are all very important skills for a quarterback. However, you’ll often find that one in particular separates the great ones from the rest of the pack. It is the ability to read the defense and make constant checks at the line of scrimmage, getting the offense into correct formations. This was a superpower of greats like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Aaron Rodgers. Former 1st round pick Josh Rosen said it best.
“Football is a chess match on steroids.”
Anybody who has played chess, or at least followed it, knows how deep and complex it can be. There is a literal infinite number of moves you can make. It forces you to think several moves ahead, anticipating what your opponent is trying to do and will do next. There is a reason the select few men and women who have mastered it are often eccentric and tend to go crazy at some point in their lives. The obsessive level of work required to play quarterback in the NFL is the same. If you want to be great, you must learn to read your opponent and think multiple plays ahead. Williams never understood how to do that before. Now he does.
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Williams has reached a level few Bears QBs ever have.
His talent was never the issue when the team drafted him. They knew he had a rocket launcher for an arm and otherworldly improvisational skills. The question he, and every quarterback, faced coming out of college was whether he could master the mental side of the game. Most who have walked through those doors of Halas Hall failed the test. Justin Fields did. Mitch Trubisky did. Rex Grossman did. Cade McNown did. Even Jay Cutler did. The only one who didn’t was Jim McMahon in the 1980s. He was a true field general. Sadly, that wasn’t enough to save him from a career filled with injuries.
Caleb Williams appears to have that same mental mastery, but with a body that appears more durable. We may finally get the chance to see what McMahon could’ve been had he stayed healthy. Williams isn’t just doing what the coaches tell him anymore. He is seizing control of the reins. Nothing happens before the snap without his say-so. That is precisely what head coach Ben Johnson wanted. When the quarterback takes charge at the line of scrimmage, the entire offense gets significantly better.
