Just as remarkable as his scrambling ability has been Williams' knack to produce huge plays when the game is on the line. He has engineered four winning scoring drives this season and five in his last 10 starts dating back to last year's season finale. One week before beating the Giants, he threw a 58-yard TD pass to tight end Colston Loveland with :17 to play to give the Bears a 47-42 win over the Bengals.
"Towards the end of the game, it's time to go win the game and you just get in that mode," Williams said. "Defenses have shown you throughout the game what they've game-planned for you, so you get into a rhythm and a flow toward the end of the game, and the mindset changes in the sense of we have no other option at that point other than to score and fight and fight and fight, and that's what we do and what we've done.
"We do want to showcase and I want to showcase throughout the whole game that we can play all 60 minutes and put up points and the defense can hold their offense, and we can start steamrolling. But until that happens, we're going to keep winning games whichever way we need."
Johnson feels that part of the reason that Williams excels in those end-of-game situations is that the offense is more in "drop-back pass mode."
"I don't want to say he's got a higher comfort level there, but yet that is probably where he's had the majority of his snaps over high school and college and now the NFL," Johnson said. "So there probably is just a little bit of, 'OK, this is my wheelhouse, and I know we're going to throw it, the defense knows we're going to throw it, and yet I can go ahead and make a play.'"