Caleb Williams excelled in his first preseason game running Ben Johnson’s offense.
Chicago looked great on both sides of the ball after what seemed like a highly successful offseason.
Still, there are plenty of reasons fans should keep expectations in check for at least another year.
Savvy consumers of NFL football know better than to put too much stock into a preseason performance. Hopefully the same applies to anyone writing about the NFL for a living … though some of us have been known to get a bit too lathered up after, say, watching the Chicago Bears look like a potential juggernaut, steamrolling the Buffalo Bills, presumably a Super Bowl contender, 38-0 Sunday night in a nationally televised game.
Pump. The. Brakes.
And yet …
Chicago quarterback Caleb Williams made his game day debut Sunday, albeit in a contest that doesn’t count, in rookie head coach Ben Johnson’s offense. And Williams looked awesome. Finally.
Yes, he was in for all of two drives. Yes, he was facing Buffalo defenders likely vying for middle-of-the-depth-chart jobs (at best) in 2025. No, he likely wasn’t seeing exotic schemes designed to confuse and frustrate him. Sure, Chicago’s second possession stalled after six plays and resulted in a punt.
But did you see that first drive?
Maybe before we obsess over the moment, we should review the last 16 months or so.
It was just a year ago that optimism was soaring – raises hand – in Chicago, Williams, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2024 draft, seemingly landing in as favorable a situation as any top pick ever had considering the talent that would be surrounding him. But he didn’t. Turns out the guy picked after Williams, Jayden Daniels, was the one who instantly turned a woebegone franchise around and maybe had the best rookie season of all time while leading the Washington Commanders to the NFC title game − a performance that reset the bar for Williams.
While Daniels excelled, Williams was torpedoed by his own bad habits, a brutally tough division and an organizational infrastructure simply unable to cultivate him – no accomplished offensive coordinator, no wizened backup quarterback to lean on, apparently no one to advise him to just get rid of the damn ball and live to fight another play. Chicago went 5-12, head coach Matt Eberflus becoming the first in more than a century of Bears football to be fired before the completion of a season.
But this year already feels different, even if the scrutiny is somehow heightened.
Sure, there has been virtually a daily summer dose of social media clips, whether in proper context or not, of Williams struggling and venting his frustration during practice while trying to ingest his new playbook. He’s publicly welcomed Johnson’s unsparing approach and meticulous schemes even as the coach has attempted to temper expectations around his new quarterback and team – one that reeled one of the hottest coaching candidates in years, aggressively retooled (especially along the line of scrimmage) during free agency and seemingly had a strong draft engineered by GM Ryan Poles.
Then came Sunday.
There was Williams, opening the game by repeatedly feathering balls to his tight ends, reliable Cole Kmet and first-round rookie Colston Loveland. Then he zipped a pass to veteran slot man Olamide Zaccheaus, the catch-and-run resulting in a 36-yard touchdown reminiscent of the dozens and dozens Johnson had orchestrated while successfully lording over the Detroit Lions attack amid a high degree of difficulty and productivity over the previous three seasons.
But it wasn’t just Williams’ numbers – which included five completions on six throws for 97 yards during that initial march. He was accurate. He was decisive. He showed off his patented pocket mobility but didn’t overextend himself – a wise decision in the heat of relatively meaningless August action. He even dirted a ball at the feet of his lineman when a play failed to develop rather than hoping to make something out of nothing − gambits that often worked during a college career that included a Heisman Trophy but not so much against professionals.
“I think getting started fast is important, it was one of our goals coming into this game,’ Williams said during Fox’s broadcast. ‘Kinda set the tone for the team, the season.”
It was indeed a snippet of what would portend a successful 2025 Bears campaign.
“The challenge is to keep it headed in that direction,’ Johnson said Sunday.
Regardless, whether preseason or regular season, these are building blocks Chicago can build with on its new foundation. Williams will doubtless have to play hero ball at times in 2025, but it doesn’t need to be in the first quarter. He doesn’t need to absorb unnecessary punishment – he was sacked a league-high 68 times as a rookie – while reverting to jailbreak football, which Johnson will doubtless attempt to drill out of him.
The Bears have won nine NFL championships in their proud history but just one in the Super Bowl era, which began in 1966. Williams knows.
“You come to a place like this, with a lot of history, and you want to be able to make something of it,’ he said.
But he’s got time. Johnson has time. Poles has time. A young and promising roster has time. However it’s time to shine almost certainly won’t come in 2025.
A successful Bears season will require patience from the hard-driving Johnson as his new charges progress with his offense. If he’s not getting incessantly grilled on local talk radio the way predecessors like Eberflus and Matt Nagy did, then that’s a win. If Johnson isn’t making himself mad while his players master his system – no trick plays revealed Sunday – even though the Lions took off almost immediately during his first season as their play caller, then that’s a win.
A successful Bears season will include new coordinator Dennis Allen getting the defense back near the top of the heap − and pitching a shutout under any circumstances is a positive development. A successful Bears season will likely see second-year wideout Rome Odunze blossom into a No. 1-caliber target.
A successful Bears season might not result in anything better than a third-place finish in the NFC North, arguably the league’s toughest division and one that could realistically produce three playoff entries. A really successful Bears season would include at least a split with the hated Green Bay Packers.
But for a team nearly 15 years removed from its last playoff win but just one from picking its latest would-be savior and just seven months from hiring a man who might finally be a worthy successor to Mike Ditka? Third place, perhaps eight wins, and maybe the first 4,000-yard passing effort in 106 seasons would represent realistic progress – and maybe the appropriate kindling to fan legitimate Super Bowl flames in 2026.