CHICAGO (WGN) — Free hot dogs and a sigh of relief are always a great combination on any given Sunday, especially when they’re the result of a Chicago Bears victory, but this football-fueled roller coaster ride is only just getting started.
In a good way.
Two days after the Wiener Circle proclaimed that they would give out free hot dogs if Caleb Williams slung a quartet of touchdown passes against the Dallas Cowboys, he did just that.
Williams dropped four big ones (to four different receivers) on the Cowboys’ heads in a 31-14 victory that went from a tightly contested ballgame at halftime, to a second-half boat race that left Jerry Jones and company treading waters more treacherous than the surf along Navy Pier in the middle of a Midwest thunderstorm.
Not that I nor the City of Chicago cares. Football’s a better world when Dallas is in a dysfunctional tailspin. It makes for great television.
But that’s not the point, or who we’re here to talk about.
No, siree Bob. We’re here for da Bears.
And man, have three weeks felt like three years with this team.
The first two weeks of the NFL season brought with them the normal array of emotional corkscrews, nose drives and loop de loops that come with being a Bears fan in this day and age.
Feel free to stop me if you’ve heard this before, but after the Bears injected a treasure trove of optimism through new hires and acquisitions this past offseason, once again, it felt like Chicago’s chosen son of professional sports franchises was ready to buck the generational curses attached to its name.
Ben Johnson, the play-caller and primary architect behind the NFL’s best offense over the last three years, was destined to guide “generational” quarterback talent Caleb Williams toward superstardom as the Bears’ offense finally moved into the 21st century.
Then Week 1 happened.
Pre-snap penalties and procedural issues that popped up in training camp reared their ugly heads once more. The Minnesota Vikings and a fresh-faced local kid, La Grange Park and Nazareth Academy’s very own J.J. McCarthy, served up a fourth-quarter gut punch that seemed to come straight out of the Matt Eberflus cookbook of late-game debacles.
All of the pomp and circumstance that rained down from the offensive wiz kid’s hire as head coach condensed into a blanket of anxiety as the Bears boarded a plane and flew to Detroit for Week 2.
Johnson and his fledgling Chicago squad walked into a matchup where the cheapest ticket was north of $350 a person, prices usually associated with the Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs. From the week that led up to the game, into the opening kick, and through the final whistle, the Bears revealed themselves to be unprepared and undermotivated. Johnson said as much in his subsequent comments.
“I thought, as a whole, that team played a little bit harder than us, and that’s a reflection of me as a coach. That’s a reflection of our coaching staff, and it is a reflection of our players too,” Johnson said later that week. “When you play a good team like that on the road, you have to be all out every single snap. That just was not the case. So, it was everybody.”
Johnson even went as far as to say, “Our practice habits are yet to reflect that of a championship-caliber team.”
A familiar dystopic gloom seemed to creep back in. The same nagging questions manifested in the minds of those around Chicago.
“Are we actually about to live through the same old Bears BS again?”
Then Week 3 came, and rays of sunlight leaked through the cracks of that metaphorical wall of darkness, revealing hints of hope to come.
Williams showed improvement week-to-week through those first two losses, and dividends were paid Sunday against the Cowboys in the form of cohesion between him, Johnson and the offense.
Williams connected with Rome Odunze on a 35-yard touchdown two drives into the game, then Johnson dialed up a flea flicker one play later, resulting in the longest TD throw of the season and his quarterback’s young career.
Later in the game, he found a wide-open Cole Kmet for a 10-yard touchdown pass.
The icing on the cake came on the 19th play of a nearly ten-minute drive on Chicago’s lone offensive possession of the third quarter. Williams found DJ Moore on a gutsy fourth-and-goal call that resulted in a 4-yard TD pass to all but seal Johnson’s first dub as head coach of the Bears. It was also Chicago’s first home victory since a 36-10 upending of the Carolina Panthers last October.
“We had a good week of preparation, and they came out and they played inspired football today,” Johnson said postgame Sunday. “Good things happen when you’re playing hard, you’re playing physical and you’re playing for the guy next to you. I thought that’s what happened here today.”
So what can we take stock of, and hope to see from the Bears’ offense in Week 4 when they travel to Las Vegas to play the Raiders?
There are a number of things, but I’m going to center my focus on Williams and Chicago’s offensive line.
Foot-eye coordination
Williams’ eyes in Johnson’s system continue to sharpen, and while his footwork still needs another layer of polish, his foundation is becoming increasingly steadfast with each passing week.
A great example is his fourth-and-goal touchdown pass to Moore.
Williams progressed through his first three options and saw that all three were covered. Then he stepped up and rolled to his left with his eyes still up. It’s at that point he saw option no. 4—Moore—wide open in the back of the end zone.
Touchdown.
“You see guys like Matthew [Stafford] … being able to know where people are and able to either keep them where they are to be able to deliver the ball–or move them and be able to deliver the ball behind them,” Williams said Wednesday. “Other than that, just being able to get comfortable with my footwork. That’s been my focus from Week 1 to Week 2.
“I think that’s why some of those passes from Week 1 to Week 2 looked a little different. My footwork, that was a big focus for me this past week–being able to focus on that and staying in rhythm with myself in the play. I think I have all the talent in the world to be able to deliver a good ball to my guys and let them go make plays for us as an offense.
“[I] Just [have] to keep that going, keep focus on my footwork. You’ve got to get everything down as a QB–all the plays, all the situations, things like that. Just [keep] consistently growing.”
I’m not saying Williams is on the precipice of crashing through that wall of darkness like he’s a navy blue and orange-clad Kool-Aid man, or set to become the next Aaron Rodgers, but the signs are there that he’s taking steps toward being the quarterback the Windy City has always dreamed of.
Offensive Line
Look, I get it.
Some of Week 3’s offensive success can and should be attributed to Dallas looking lost and confused more often than not on defense. But the other team—in this case, the Bears—still has to run its offense and execute its plays, and the most important variable in those equations is the blocking of the offensive line.
Last Sunday was a banner day for Chicago’s big, meaty men in the middle. Whether it was holding a clean pocket for an extended period or getting out in space to block for skill position players, the Bears’ o-line made sure Williams wasn’t sacked once for the first time in his career, and helped set up explosive plays in the short-to-intermediate pass game.
Chicago’s offensive line (and by extension, D’Andre Swift and Kmet) did a great job with their protections on play action. The two examples I used above are from the Bears’ first two play-action pass calls against the Cowboys, and both targeted Colston Loveland.
On first-and-10 from their own 19-yard line to begin the game, Chicago came out in 12 personnel in a single-back formation. Williams is given an ultra-clean pocket to step into at the top of his drop, but he sails a throw to Loveland just a tad bit high and out of his reach along the left sideline.
One drive later on first-and-10 from the Bears’ 32-yard line, Johnson went back to play-action, but this time in a tight end-heavy 13 personnel package. Loveland motioned from the left end to the right end of the offensive line, then Kmet motioned into the backfield as a fullback.
Kmet stayed in pass pro while Williams dropped back into another clean pocket, and hit Loveland for a 31-yard gain down the right sideline.
Both were long-developing plays set up near perfectly by the blockers up front.
The offensive line also showed the ability to kick out and set up blocks in space.
On second-and-10 inside the Cowboys’ red zone with 2:47 to go in the second quarter, Olamide Zaccheaus was sent in motion out right to serve as the screen man.
Williams’ throw ended up being disrupted by the free rusher and skipped to Zaccheaus for an incompletion, but look at how well the blocking set up in front of him.
If he caught this ball, Darnell Wright, Jonah Jackson and Drew Dalman were in great position to eliminate the three closest defenders to Zaccheaus. Then with Moore occupying the boundary corner, that would have left Zaccheaus with a one-on-one matchup with the field safety to potentially score a touchdown.
The last point I’ll make on the offensive line’s improvement is a little wrinkle Johnson and Declan Doyle have started to employ pre-snap.
On first-and-10 with 43 seconds to go in the first half, Chicago used what looked like a quick snap. Dalman waited and looked around to see that everyone else on the line was set, then went down into his stance and immediately fired off the snap to Caleb Williams.
A lot was made about learning the silent count heading into the Week 2 debacle in Detroit, but this was another little, nuanced addition to help the Bears overcome the seven pre-snap penalties they had on offense in their first two games of the season.
“I was encouraged. That’s the expectation. You come out of that game and there’s less of that. That’s a credit to our guys coming into work and handling Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,” Doyle said Thursday. “That’s really when that stuff gets cleaned up during the week. We go have good days, and then you go out on Sunday and you’re thinking less at the line of scrimmage.
“You’re just going and playing, you’re in flow. That causes a lot less of those to be at the line of scrimmage where you’re trying to think through things, your mind’s in two different spots and you end up jumping.”
Being in a state of flow sounds like an improvement over the first two weeks of the season, which felt more like a ride on the Raging Bull at Six Flags than a climb up the stairs of progress.
Who knows? Maybe Williams can find a way to sling five touchdown passes in the future and con another iconic Chicago foodie location into a giveaway. Then we can all gather to enjoy the roller coaster ride that is Bears football once more, instead of trying not to vomit as we navigate the corkscrews of horrible offense.
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