LAKE FOREST, Ill., — As the Chicago Bears continue on with offseason work at Halas Hall, the buzz around the franchise is centered around Caleb Williams' development and his partnership with new head coach Ben Johnson.
The Bears opened up the checkbook to hire Johnson this offseason and assembled a staff in hopes that the quarterback takes the next step in his development, which is what makes this offseason so important. Now, we are starting to learn more and more about the improvements the Bears are seeking from William,s and the latest from Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated dives right into that.
Breer wrote on Williams' development in his NFL Takeaways column on Tuesday, stating that the Bears want Williams to focus on two areas: Body language and presnap procedure.
There were two areas where the coaches wanted improvement from Williams. Both related to how he carried himself as the quarterback, based on what the 2024 season showed. One was body language. The other was presnap procedure.
On the former, while the coaches understood the beating he took, they showed film to emphasize how he'd been slow to pull himself up off the ground. It was a long year. People got fired in-season. And in adverse circumstances, the staff explained, having a quarterback who was rolling with the punches would go a long way. On the latter, there was a smattering of small things—like on the first play of one game, he turned to his left, thinking the motion was coming, when it was actually coming from the right—that needed to be cleaned up.
Even in a limited time with a new regime, it does make sense for these to be two areas of concern after Johnson watched the tape. Williams was sacked a lot last season and took some tough hits from defenses. Being able to recognize where the pressure is coming from and what the defense is showing presnap to when the ball is hiked is also important.
That's something Williams struggled with at times last season as well.
The footwork will be another area
After being able to see Williams and the Bears on the practice field for the first time this offseason a week ago, one thing we noticed as reporters was the placement of his feet. The quarterback's left foot is now forward compared to his right foot a year ago.
That's a change that Williams wanted to work on himself before even meeting with Johnson.
"So it wasn't so much us telling him to do it," Johnson said. "It was more a mutual, 'Yeah, let's see what this looks like.' And I think he's taken to it."
The coach believes in it too as he wants to work from the ground up with his new quarterback.
"I've done it a number of ways in my time in the league, and really over the last few years, I've kind of gravitated towards that. It's something that I feel pretty strongly about," Johnson said. "He and I talked about it, the reasons why we want to do it. I think it helps out certainly with the quick game from the gun, and then helps us being a little bit better at a throwing posture for a lot of the other things that we're asking him to do."
The Bears are hoping Williams does develop in his second year as they have invested a lot into the No. 1 overall pick from the 2024 NFL Draft. And making these improvements should see an uptick in success, we hope.
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