Caleb Williams is having a really good second season for the Chicago Bears. He’s 7th in the NFL with 23 touchdown passes, second in the NFL with six interceptions, and leads the league with six 4th quarter comebacks. Yet people continue to dodge giving the young quarterback any credit. Why? Most of it centers around a glaring part of his stat line: his completion percentage. The 57.8% rate is dead last among starting quarterbacks in the league this year, confirming his poor accuracy and fatal flaw in the eyes of many.
However, the argument starts to fall apart once you delve into the deeper statistics. Let’s start with the obvious one. Chicago ranks 7th in the NFL with 23 dropped passes this season. If the majority of those were caught, his completion percentage would hover around 62%. Then you have throwaways. These are plays in which the quarterback throws it out of bounds or in the dirt to avoid a turnover. Williams has 34 this season, which is the most in the NFL.
That is 57 out of his 499 passing attempts that were either inaccurate on purpose or accurate passes that were dropped.
The case against Caleb Williams gets worse the deeper you dig.
You also have intended air yards. This stat averages out the depth of target on every passing attempt by a quarterback. Williams is fifth in the NFL at 8.6 yards per target. This is not a quarterback who asks to throw constant high-percentage, shorter passes. He’s told to attack down the field, and that can often lead to tougher throws.
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Meanwhile, Jared Goff’s healthy 68.7% completion percentage is largely thanks to his 6.4 IAY average, which is third-worst in the league. Nobody talks about it because Detroit is the best yards-after-catch team in the league. Caleb Williams has played on the higher difficulty setting all year.
Last but not least, Williams is the sixth-most pressured quarterback in the NFL. Opponents have gotten in his face on 24.9% of his dropbacks. Some of that is due to him holding the ball, but not nearly as much as last season. Having to navigate dirty pockets typically leads to tougher throws. Yet despite all of that, Williams is still 11-4, still the third-fewest sacked quarterback in the league, and is having one of the best passing seasons in franchise history.
