The Chicago Bears know that Caleb Williams has some of the most impressive top-end talent of any quarterback to ever step on a football field.
They don't need him to prove that any more than he already has, though. They actually need him to just do the easy things well.
ESPN's Dan Graziano, in a new article on Tuesday, asked a question of each team in the NFL about their QB situation. For the Bears, he asked: "Can Caleb Williams improve in the boring parts of the game?"
And while that's a legitimately boring question, it's also crucial to the future of the Bears.
"What we remember about Williams' second season are the wow throws," Graziano writes. "The fourth-quarter and overtime heroics. The fact that the Bears, like the Panthers, made the Rams work extremely hard to win a playoff game. What we might not remember is that Williams finished 32nd in the NFL in completion percentage (behind Cam Ward and ahead of only J.J. McCarthy) and 32nd in off-target rate (behind McCarthy and ahead of only Penix). So, there's still room for him to improve in spite of how awesome he was to watch in those big spots last season."
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Williams didn't make it on the cover of the Madden video game by making simple plays. He didn't earn Patrick Mahomes comparisons in college by taking the check-downs.
Now, though, Williams is reaching the stage where that could be the next step in his evolution, even if looks unexciting.
"It will be Williams' second season with Ben Johnson as his coach, and the first season offered promise of wonderful things to come," Graziano writes. "What could determine Williams' (and Johnson's) long-term success is how Williams improves in the more basic parts of the game (i.e., accuracy). If that happens, the Bears won't need quite as many of those fourth-quarter hero throws."
The Bears are a team, if everything breaks right, that can compete for a Super Bowl.
To reach that ceiling, Williams needs to sometimes settle for the plays that barely leave the ground floor.
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