New Bears head coach Ben Johnson took one look at Caleb Williams’ league-leading sack total in 2024 and wasted no time overhauling the Chicago offensive line.
It makes sense that Johnson, the former QB-whispering Lions offensive coordinator who waited patiently for the right head coaching gig, would make drastic moves to shore up protection for Williams, for the fate of coach and quarterback are inextricably linked. Johnson surely knows that another uneven campaign from his young quarterback could put Johnson on the fast track to Hot Seat status in Chicago.
Johnson was brought to Chicago to salvage Williams.
The Bears over the past month spent $42 million over three years for center Drew Dalman, traded a fourth round draft pick to the Chiefs in exchange for top-flight guard Joe Thuney, and acquired guard Jonah Jackson from the Rams for a sixth rounder. The cast of big boys protecting Williams will be nearly unrecognizable from 2024, when the rookie absorbed an NFL-leading 68 sacks along with 241 pressures, the third highest mark in the league.
These are inarguably good moves for Johnson and the Bears: Pro Football Focus last season graded Dalman as the league’s 12th best pass-blocking center and Thuney was third best among guards.
There remain stubborn questions about whether Williams’ gobsmacking 2024 sack numbers were his line’s fault, his fault, or some difficult-to-parse blend of the two.
Last fall you probably turned on a Bears game or came across a RedZone highlight (or lowlight) in which Williams was scrambling for his life fifteen yards behind the line of scrimmage, fake pumping and evading defenders and sprinting from one sideline to the other, waiting for someone — anyone — to get open in the dysfunctional Chicago offense. These hair-on-fire plays often ended with Williams overthrowing a pass catcher downfield, throwing into double or triple coverage, or taking a catastrophic, drive-killing sack.
Williams, for all his rookie year flaws, was far from the worst quarterback when faced with pressure from oncoming rushers. He ranked 11th out of 40 qualifying QBs in completion rate over expected when pressured, though his catchable ball rate in such scenarios ranked near the bottom — 37th out of 40 quarterbacks, alongside Jameis Winston and Anthony Richardson.
It was Caleb’s performance from a clean pocket that should cause the most angst among Bears faithful. He was 0.7 percent over his expected completion rate from a clean pocket in 2024, fifth lowest among qualifying QBs. Only Richardson had a lower catchable ball rate from clean pockets.
A history of sack taking
For all his ability to dodge defenders, sense pressure from every angle, and keep the play alive, Williams wasn’t all that productive when under pressure in 2024: He logged the fourth lowest yards per attempt on under-pressure throws and his 44 percent completion rate on those attempts ranked among the NFL’s lowest. Bears fans might dismiss this as a function of former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron’s disastrous offensive scheme. Probably that’s too simple of an explanation.
Williams last year was pressured on 36 percent of his drop backs, ranking 18th out of 40 qualifying QBs. Here’s where the problem lies: Williams took a sack on 28 percent of those pressures; only Deshaun Watson and Will Levis had a higher pressure-to-sack ratio. And it wasn’t as if Williams simply lacked the time to set his feet and operate from the pocket. In fact, Lamar Jackson was the only quarterback in the NFL last season to average more time to throw than Williams on eventual pressures. It’s a damning little stat.
There’s also the highly inconvenient question of whether Chicago’s offensive line was as putrid as it appeared on the field. Pro Football Focus graded the Bears offensive line as the league’s ninth-best pass-blocking unit, better than the Vikings, Chiefs, and Lions. The Bears had the tenth highest pressure rate over expected. Washington had a nearly identical rate and Jayden Daniels took 21 fewer sacks than Caleb.
I understand that Bears faithful will reject these metrics like Neo rejecting his new reality in The Matrix. You find intolerable the thought that all those 2024 sacks — or at least a good chunk of them — were Williams’ fault. Well, it would not be the first time Williams’ has struggled with the dreaded self-sack. At USC in 2023 — his final collegiate season — Williams was sacked on 24 percent of his pressures, the 19th highest rate among 87 qualifying quarterbacks. That marked a spike from his 15 percent pressure-to-sack ratio from 2022.
Maybe Williams backers will point to the system or the receivers or the coordinator or the direction of the wind or the angle of the sun on certain Sundays for explanations as to why their guy took so many sacks last season. But sacks are often a quarterback sack. Bo Nix and Michael Penix almost never took sacks in college, and transferred that ability into the NFL last year. The same goes for Richardson.
Johnson’s 2025 mission will be turning Williams into Jared Goff, or something akin to Goff. Last season Goff took a sack on a minuscule 12 percent of his pressures, second lowest to Patrick Mahomes. Goff, who was elite by every metric from a clean pocket during Johnson’s time in Detroit, had the NFL’s sixth best catchable ball rate when pressured in 2024. If Williams can follow Goff’s lead and take what’s given to him rather than constantly trying to make something out of nothing, he should be far better for real and fantasy football purposes in 2025.
Johnson will reportedly give Williams more control over the Chicago offense than he had under Waldron. That includes, according to The Athletic’s Dan Pompei, “authority with protection adjustments that not all QBs have.”
Hopefully it’s the kind of shift that will help Williams operate unharassed from the pocket in 2025. Now the issue is becoming less erratic from an unsullied pocket.
