CHICAGO — Bryce Young spent most of Sunday on the Carolina Panthers’ bench, watching his counterpart do what he had hoped to do. Caleb Williams is growing into the starting quarterback job in Chicago before the NFL’s eyes. He was at his best so far on Sunday — albeit against a bad opponent — making quick decisions, throwing with accuracy, using his legs when needed, changing plays when warranted, hitting a few tantalizing deep shots. Making very, very few mistakes.
That was supposed to be Young’s arc in Carolina, too, but on Sunday, he played only in mop-up duty of the Panthers’ 36-10 loss. His replacement, Andy Dalton, has calmed the Panthers in the three games since he replaced Young but has not substantially improved their fortunes. Head coach Dave Canales said he put Young in the game in part because he did not want Dalton to play behind a battered offensive line in such a lopsided game. Young has gone from first overall pick to, essentially, a tackling dummy in little more than one season, and where he goes from here is unclear. The Panthers, meanwhile, are 1-4.
These two teams are linked forever by the trade that allowed the Panthers to draft Young, that landed the Bears Williams and so much more. But a game that might have looked like it could be a referendum on how best to manage a young quarterback — is it more prudent to let him sit and learn like the Panthers say they are doing with Young now or have him play immediately, as the Bears opted to do with Williams — evolved Sunday into something else. There may never be a definitive answer on how best to manage a young quarterback, although no less an authority than Aaron Rodgers believes they are best served by sitting and watching. But what both Young and Williams need — what the NFL is terribly short of — is patience.
Young got some of it, needs more and so, too, do the Panthers. They have one of the league’s worst defenses and are beset by injuries. The move to Dalton was made, in part, to show how much progress the Panthers had made in areas other than quarterback. Maybe so, but even that progress has been limited, at best.
Williams set off alarms in the first two games with quarterback ratings in the 50s. But he has improved dramatically in the last few weeks, the early handwringing replaced Sunday by ebullience over his breakout performance — a 304-yard, two-touchdown, no-interception effort. Williams was everything the Bears hoped they got when they made him their new franchise QB in April, mobile enough to elude rushers, accurate, taking the many easy throws that are part of the offense, leaning on the running game, especially early, going through progressions, throwing deep when it was available.
“He knows this is his first year doing this,” Head coach Matt Eberflus said after the game. “He’s going to face a lot of different things, different looks, different coverages. Knowing his guys, knowing what he can do and can’t do … he’s just learning and growing, and you can see that in the course of the games we’ve seen. Got to keep leveling up. Every time we’ve challenged him, he’s done that. Just getting better and better every single week.”
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Williams so far is that he is responding as coaches issue target areas for improvement. He has limited negative plays. This week, coaches wanted a faster start and Williams delivered a seven-play, 70-yard drive that mixed runs and passes to three receivers, the third a play-fake that resulted in a 34-yard touchdown pass to a wide open D.J. Moore. It was the first touchdown the Bears scored in the first quarter this season. In it, the Bears operated out of the no huddle, a move to an up-tempo style that coaches wanted to use, in part, to take advantage of the Panthers’ defensive injuries and limit their ability to substitute. Another goal this week: get the wide receivers involved. Moore and rookie Rome Odunze caught five passes each. Keenan Allen had three more. And this week, there was an emphasis on trying to get the deep-passing game going. Moore’s two touchdowns were on passes of 34 and 30 yards.
“It’s amazing,” Moore said. “Took five weeks to get the down-the-field pass game going. When it hits, it hits.”
Five weeks is not really much time for a new offense and a new quarterback to come together. Williams, though, is being judged against the fast start of Jayden Daniels in Washington and C.J. Stroud‘s extraordinary 2023 rookie season in Houston. Those performances, though, are the outliers. Much more common are early-career struggles, the kind that Young endured during a tumultuous rookie campaign and early this season. Williams is benefitting from something Young did not: His team built the roster around him before he even arrived. The Bears have a defense, trading for Montez Sweat last season. They have running backs. They have top pass catchers. That has kept all the weight of expectation from resting solely on Williams. The Bears won their season-opener on the backs of the defense and special teams. As Williams is developing, the football is more complementary. Late in the second quarter Sunday, the Bears recovered a fumble by Panthers tight end Tommy Tremble. On the next play, D’Andre Swift turned a short reception into a 42-yard gain. Two plays later, Swift scored on a 1-yard run. In all, the Bears defense had an interception, two fumbles and a turnover on downs. The offense scored on all four of the drives that followed.
“I think the most important thing is understanding what the team needs and taking what the defense gives us,” Williams said. “Today, we did that. Overall, us, as an offense, did a tremendous job. We needed big runs, needed screens, the explosive plays. After turnovers … getting back on offense, that’s definitely how we want to play, what we envision as an offense.”
Moore acknowledged that there will still be hiccups for Williams. The challenge for the Bears is to limit them, and to grow from them.
The last time the Bears were 3-2 was 2021, when Dalton started the first two games of the season before he got hurt and Justin Fields replaced him. They dropped the next five, finished 6-11 and Matt Nagy was fired. The Bears set off on the cycle of uncertainty and quarterback miscalculations they only now are counting on Williams to keep them from.
This iteration of the Bears, though, seems better-equipped to avoid Fields’ fate and finally end the Bears’ stretch of quarterbacking mediocrity. It is a more complete team, with more weapons around Williams and a sturdy defense. Eberflus jokes that he could never have imagined he would have eight team captains, but it has helped the Bears weather adversity already. One day last week, Williams said, the offense had a bad performance. The next day the leaders met — walking off the field, they had said they needed to be better the next day. That is part of the building and maturation process, too. It can take time. While Young seems to have run out of it, Williams’ time has arrived.
