How do you teach somebody who’s achieved immense success doing a specific thing to do that specific thing less? This was the conundrum facing Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson after the 2025 season ended. Quarterback Caleb Williams had built his football career on improvisation and off-script plays. The dude is a wizard at them, pulling game-changing moments out of thin air. It’s a big reason the Bears survived so many close games to reach the playoffs. However, Johnson also knows Williams’ reliance on it may have cost the team some other opportunities.
Therein lay the issue. The head coach didn’t want to completely dissuade his quarterback from using that god-given ability. At the same time, he also knew that leaning on it too often could be detrimental to the overall execution on offense. So Johnson did what he does best. He ran the numbers. After compiling last season’s data, he sat down with his quarterback to review it. According to Jason Lieser of the Chicago Sun-Times, the findings were somewhat contradictory, but also painted a clear picture.
Ben Johnson needed Williams to pick his moments better.
Johnson isolated the 120 plays in which Williams broke the pocket and it turned into a free-for-all. That produced some of his most epic passes, but overall, less than 40% of the time he did that resulted in “good plays for us.”
That led to two key observations:
1. Johnson showed Williams instances in which it was completely unnecessary to scramble, and a simple sidestep would’ve allowed him to still hit the primary receiver on time.
2. Williams can be amazing on the fly, and Johnson needs to make better use of it.
“We’ll do some things a little bit different,” Johnson said. “He needs to be more accurate, sure, but we need our route runners to come alive to create separation for him also. As a coach, you’re dedicated to teaching the playbook, [but] we don’t want to fully shut that off. We see opportunity there. It’s not that we want to take those 120 plays down; I want to see that 40% go up.
Ben Johnson knows Williams faces the same challenge as other scramblers.
The trick isn’t to just stop scrambling. That would be a foolish waste of an obvious gift. The trick is learning when to scramble and when to hang in the pocket. It sounds simple, but it isn’t easy. Such a balancing act is incredibly difficult to learn. Plenty of great scramblers never really mastered the art of balancing the two. Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Steve Young, and John Elway are such examples. However, for each of them, there’s a Justin Fields, Bobby Douglass, Kordell Stewart, and Michael Vick.
All of those guys were incredible runners. They dropped jaws seemingly every week. However, that style of play has a shelf life. You lose speed as the seasons pile up. Your body also takes more hits than normal. That is why you see such quarterbacks flame out by their early 30s. Ben Johnson doesn’t want that to happen. It is why his mission remains teaching Williams situational football. Running is fine, but only do it when left with no other choice or if the play call specifically calls for it. Don’t do it just to do it.
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Johnson has the right perspective.
The solution isn’t telling Williams to just reduce the number of scrambles. That is counterproductive. It would merely force the quarterback to put a leash on himself. No, the goal must be improving the efficiency. Make sure more of those 120 plays result in positive outcomes. Sometimes it’s taking a short pass rather than seeking an explosive. Sometimes it’s take it himself. Then there are times when you just sidestep the pressure, trust your protection, and find the open man.
If Williams does the latter a few more times each game, he’ll learn to appreciate it more. That is what Johnson is counting on. It will keep the quarterback healthier and make the times he does scramble even tougher to defend, since opponents won’t be able to predict them as easily. Meanwhile, it’s on the coaches to make sure others on the offense are doing their part to make those scramble moments more fruitful by working themselves open or coming back to the ball.
