Caleb Williams, Bears are in sweet spot coming off bye week

The Chicago Bears are sitting at 4-2 on the season after their bye week. They have the sixth-best point differential in the league. They even have three games after their bye before they start the inevitable cannibalization of division play. 

This is the Bears’ sweet spot, and they’re right in the middle of it.

A big reason for that is the incredibly quick assimilation of rookie quarterback Caleb Williams into the Bears offense. He has taken a step forward every single week since the start of the season.

Sure, it didn’t look good in the beginning, but that should have been expected with an offense that had more new on it than the quarterback. There was Shane Waldron, the Bears’ new offensive coordinator. There was wide receiver Keenan Allen and rookie ninth-overall pick Rome Odunze. Waldron had to figure out exactly how to use new running back D’Andre Swift and what that looked like with 2023 draft pick Roschon Johnson.

Now, it’s all working in tandem and Williams is at the helm.

He’s starting to get a full command of the offensive scheme, while the offensive line has stepped up to help and his receivers have added to their rapport with him. 

There’s probably no better example than on two throws intended for D.J. Moore, one during the first week of the season that went incomplete and the other against Carolina in Week 5 that went for a touchdown.

It’s not the exact same play, but on third-and-3 in the first quarter of Week 1, Moore runs a deep drag route across the field. Against the Titans, it’s a deep miss given that Williams gets flushed out of the pocket and he’s forced to try to deliver the ball on the run. 

In Williams’ second-ever pass to Moore, the pocket collapses as multiple linemen get beat and Williams escapes the pressure to his left, running parallel with Moore, to his credit. He fires the ball against his momentum, something he was able to do in college, but he throws it too far ahead of Moore. They weren’t on the same page. 

Contrast that against the Panthers. 

It’s second-and-6, Moore is lined up inside of the numbers, instead of the outside, giving him less of a distance to travel. He’s running from the opposite side of the field, but it’s the same route. This time — with good protection thanks in large part to Swift faking the handoff but instead staying in to block — Williams delivers.

Williams does a good job looking off the safety, keeping his eyes down the middle of the field before pivoting to Moore, who has now made it to the opposite sideline. Moore ends up tiptoeing it in for a touchdown after shaking his defender.

It’s one play, but there is a ton of encouragement to take away from it. There were so many improvements across multiple facets offensively all in that one little play.

The route is crisper on Moore’s part. The protection is better. Williams is more comfortable and able to manipulate the defense. The timing then all lines up and Williams delivers an excellent ball, away from the defender, leading Moore — but not too much — and it all works out. 

It speaks to the larger evolution of the Bears offense, in particular.

In the first three weeks of the season, Williams had the third-worst passer rating in the NFL at 58.6. He had the sixth-worst completion rate. The Bears’ passing offense had the sixth-worst EPA per play. 

In the next three weeks? The Bears’ passing offense had the third-best EPA per play. Williams had the third-best completion percentage at 71.7%. He had the second-best passer rating at 115.5. That’s not among rookies. That’s across the league.

As a whole, the Bears offense has the sixth-best EPA per play since Week 4. It puts them ahead of teams like the 49ers, the Bengals, the Packers and the Texans in that span.

Yes, it’s come against one-win teams. But I’m old enough to remember when the Bears didn’t do what they were supposed to do against struggling teams. I’m definitely old enough to remember when they didn’t do it in dominating fashion.

And no midseason check-in would be complete without mentioning Chicago’s defense, which hit the ground running from the start. In Week 1, the defense almost single-handedly won the game against the Titans. The offense didn’t record a score, but the Bears put up 24 points anyway.

Heading into the bye week, Chicago’s defense was allowing the third-lowest EPA per play, had the lowest missed-tackle percentage at just 9%, according to PFF, and was top five in sacks and passing stops. The Bears are also +6 in turnover margin, tied for the fourth-best mark in the league, and have the third-most takeaways of any defense with 13.

Overall, it’s led to the Bears fitting right in to the NFC North, which leads the league in point differential. Chicago ranks third, behind only the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions. The Bears are one spot ahead of the Green Bay Packers. 

This is again where that sweet spot that they’re in comes into play. Up until this point, just two NFC North matchups have occurred: Vikings vs. Packers, and Vikings vs. Lions. This division has had the benefit of getting to play other teams and stack some wins before getting into the dogfight that will be the NFC North schedule. 

That’s why it’s imperative the Bears continue to take advantage of the spot they’re in. They got this weekend to regroup, and then it’s a showdown between the first- and second-overall pick when they travel to take on the Commanders (assuming Jayden Daniels, who left Week 7 with a rib injury, is healthy). After that, the Bears will get the 2-4 Cardinals in Arizona and the 1-6 Patriots at home before their Week 11 showdown against the Packers at Soldier Field.

Williams and Co. are trending in the right direction to do so, and I think there’s little doubt about how this team has been constructed and the decisions general manager Ryan Poles has made. It’s been a long rebuild since Poles took over in 2022, but Bears fans are starting to see their patience pay off.

Carmen Vitali is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. Carmen had previous stops with The Draft Network and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. She spent six seasons with the Bucs, including 2020, which added the title of Super Bowl Champion (and boat-parade participant) to her résumé. You can follow Carmen on Twitter at @CarmieV.