Bears quarterback Caleb Williams bounded to the podium Tuesday with a snow hat pulled tightly over his ears, asked how everyone was doing, adjusted the microphones and said, “Let’s get to it.”
He’s in that mode.
With his first playoff game coming Saturday at home against the Packers, Williams was all business. There was no time for wandering answers or musing poetically about coach Ben Johnson and the magnitude of the moment. He said it all by saying little.
He and the Bears aren’t exactly riding high into the playoffs after a listless loss to the Lions on Sunday, and Williams said he’s “bringing that frustration to work” this week.
The Bears must bring that fire to the practice field this week, but also to the game. They need to come out swinging Saturday night rather than slide into one of the slow starts that have hindered them this season.
“We don’t have time for that anymore,” Williams said. “If that starts with me, that starts with me. We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. Creating a spark early. … That’s the mindset: Go out there, start fast. We’ll make sure of it.”
He took questions for a little over nine minutes, rarely rambled and closed, as he has since the day he arrived, with, “Awesome. Da Bears,” moved briskly to the exit.
More and more over the last few months, Williams appears to have adopted Johnson’s approach and attitude. That’s a great sign for the Bears. The coach has been just terse and eager to move on this week.
The mood at Halas Hall is unmistakably different than during the regular season and markedly more intense than even their last playoff appearance in 2020.
That team staggered to 8-8, was fortunate to get in at all and had little hope of winning a single game. This one took the NFL by storm and, at Johnson’s urging, has been relentlessly unsatisfied.
It’s been a wild season, and it’s difficult for anyone to put a limit on how far these Bears will go. Johnson set their sights on winning the Super Bowl, saying this week it’ll require a four-game winning streak, “which we’ve done twice already,” and safety Kevin Byard said Tuesday, “I don’t believe there’s a team in this league, especially in NFC, that’s unbeatable.”
Many elements factor into the Bears’ prospects of a deep playoff run, but none are as pivotal as Williams. And the best way he can help Saturday is to have the offense ready to attack from the jump. That same energy he had Tuesday would serve him well in the huddle against the Packers.
The Bears have struggled at the start of games throughout the season and scored on just five opening drives, third-fewest in the NFL. They had a league-high eight three-and-outs on opening drives, and nothing quiets the stadium like that.
Solving that problem has been maddening for Johnson, and when asked Tuesday what has worked and what hasn’t, he said, “I don’t know that there’s a right answer for that.”
Given that he always seems to have answers, he might have been sparing Williams some criticism. While his late-game heroics have been thrilling, they might not have been necessary if he’d played better early.
Williams had an 84.4 passer rating in the first half during the regular season, which ranked 28th among 33 qualifying quarterbacks. In the second half and overtime, his 96.0 passer rating ranked 13th, and he was third with 16 touchdown passes.
The cold starts were an issue in both games against the Packers last month, and the Bears fell behind by double digits in the third quarter each time.
At Lambeau Field in early December, the offense opened with back-to-back three-and-outs and punted on four of its first five possessions. Williams was 6-for-14 passing for 32 yards and a 50.3 passer rating at halftime, while Packers quarterback Jordan Love was well on his way to a monster game.
Two weeks later at Soldier Field, it was more of the same at the beginning. Williams was mostly a non-factor with 65 yards passing and a 78.5 rating in the first half.
He rallied both times to get the Bears in reach, falling just short at the end in the first game and pulling off an epic comeback to win the second in overtime, but that’s not a formula the Bears want to keep testing.
“We certainly don’t want to have to lean into that each and every week,” Johnson said while also acknowledging the Bears have sent a message to the rest of the NFL that they’re never out of a game. “We’d like to start off a little bit faster and make it more of a complete game.”
The most promising part of this Bears season has been that there’s still so much they can improve. This is absolutely a work in progress, and they’ve still managed to go 11-6 and claim the No. 2 playoff seed in the NFC.
That’s especially true of Williams, who now has a proper outline of what a franchise quarterback should be and is working to fill it in. Igniting the offense right away against the Packers and sending them backpedaling would be a major step forward.
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