Second-year Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams hasn’t quite yet hit the highs achieved by the signal callers drafted below him in 2024, Pro Bowlers Jaden Daniels and Drake Maye.
MORE: NFL insider reveals whether it’s time for Bears to panic about Caleb Williams
Playing against a Baltimore Ravens squad missing MVP Lamar Jackson last weekend, Chicago fell by two touchdowns, 30-16. Williams had a robust passing game in terms of yardage — going 25-for-38 and logging 285 yards — but recorded zero touchdowns and was picked off once on an attempt to second-year wideout Rome Odunze.
Anxious Chicago fans — haunted, no doubt, by memories of Mitchell Trubisky and Rex Grossman (we’ll give Justin Fields an incomplete, since the 26-year-old former Bears first-round draft pick still could hit with the New York Jets, although he hasn’t looked great) — are understandably concerned with Williams’ first season-and-a-half of production.
Williams has a laser arm, and has more upside than any Bears quarterback of the 21st century (yes, even Jay Cutler). But can the 23-year-old achieve it?
Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen of The Athletic Football Show both believe the 6-foot-1 USC alum can still develop into a superstar.
“The one example I would come back to if I were a hopeful Bears fan is that even in his second year, Josh Allen had a lot of issues with accuracy throwing the ball down the field,” Mays said. “He did a very good job of starting to hone the intermediate area of the field in his second year in 2019, but whenever they tried to push the ball down the field, they were rarely successful.”
The Buffalo Bills MVP signal caller finally emerged as an All-Pro and Pro Bowler in his third season after being selected out of Wyoming, 2020, and is now consistently one of the league’s best players.
Klassen, meanwhile, pointed to the choppy growth of two other 2024 Pro Bowler quarterbacks as a good reference point for Williams. Both entered the league with outsized expectations, and both finally rewarded those expectations fairly recently.
“It is frustrating that he has these moments where he’s a little bit jittery, you know, off his rhythm or (making situational mistakes). (But) Sam Darnold was like this early in his career. Baker Mayfield was like this early in his career,” Klassen opined. “Caleb is more talented than those guys and has shown way more positives than those guys really did. He should get the runway to do this with the coaching staff and team that he has in a way those guys didn’t.”
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