THE FINALE!!
Rookie Variability
So far in this series, we’ve seen that Caleb Williams was generally a sub-par passer in his rookie season, and he particularly struggled with deep accuracy and letting too many pressures turn into sacks. One thing we haven’t given much thought to, however, is how much the inconsistency around him may have impacted his performance and development. Chicago went through two head coaches and three offensive coordinators during the season, and it’s not hard to imagine that chaos may have made life difficult on a rookie QB.
In order to see if the data suggests this was the case, I broke Williams’ season up into a number of segments that matched key off-field moments during the season:
- Weeks 1-3: The start of the year.
- Weeks 4-6: After week three, offensive leaders had a meeting with then offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and asked for him to be more aggressive in his coaching. This period starts immediately after that meeting and runs until the bye.
- Weeks 8-10: After the bye, Waldron reverted back to early season form, and he was fired after week 10.
- Weeks 11-13: Thomas Brown’s time as the offensive coordinator.
- Weeks 14+: Thomas Brown’s time as the head coach, with Chris Beatty serving as offensive coordinator.
(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)
A few thoughts:
- Well, that’s interesting. Caleb actually played pretty darn well during the two stretches of the season when he was coached the most effectively – Shane Waldron for 3 weeks before the bye after the players yelled at him and Thomas Brown’s three weeks as the offensive coordinator. If you’re looking for one big reason to be optimistic about Williams after his rookie season, there you are.
- Those 6 games saw Williams more effectively gain yards and throw touchdowns, and his PFF grades, which are meant to be a summary of overall performance, soared – six of his best seven PFF grades on the season came in those 6 games.
- Williams’ two main weaknesses both improved significantly in these six games as well.
- Downfield accuracy: Williams was accurate on 35% of deep balls during these games. This is still not good (NFL average was 41%) but was appreciably better than the 25% in his other 11 games of the season.
- Taking sacks: During these 6 games, Williams was sacked on 7.6% of plays and saw 26% of his pressures turn into sacks. These values are still worse than NFL averages (6.3% sack rate, 19% pressure to sack rate), but are appreciably better than the rest of Williams’ season, which was an 11.0% sack rate and 29% pressure to sack rate.
- To be fair, some of this seeming improvement may have been due to poor defenses faced in those six weeks.
- The defenses in Williams’ two best samples allowed an average of 7.4 yards/attempt and posted a 6.3% sack rate, while the defenses in the other games allowed an average of 7.0 yards/attempt and posted a 6.8% sack rate.
- Those are real differences, but they are not nearly as different as Williams’ stats against those defenses, suggesting the quality of the opponent was not the primary reason for Williams’ improved performance.
- Outside of those six games, you can see a couple other trends throughout his rookie season even through the coaching changes.
- For starters, Williams saw his interception rate plummet after the first three weeks, and that was consistent through all of the other changes that took place.
- Williams also held the ball consistently longer after those first three weeks without his sack rate really rising above where it was at the start of the season, which speaks to him figuring out the speed of the NFL, at least to some extent.
Career Outlook
Now I want to take a quick look at what might be expected from Caleb Williams in 2025 and beyond. Last offseason, I looked at recent #1 overall pick QBs, so let’s start by taking stock of where Caleb Williams ranked relative to those peers.
Relative to the 11 QBs drafted 1st overall since 2010, Williams ranked roughly in the middle of the pack when accounting for league-wide stats during their rookie season:
- 6th in completion percentage
- 7th in yards/attempt
- 6th in touchdown %
- 1st in interception %
- 10th in sack rate
- 5th in passer rating
- 4th in PFF grade
Like has been pointed out earlier in this series, rookie QBs generally struggle, so there’s no need to be alarmed by Williams’ rookie season. It was right in line with his 1st overall pick peers, the majority of whom turned into long-term starters in the NFL.
The second thing to note is that rookie performances aren’t very predictive of career outcomes. PFF found this in a detailed study a few years ago, and a glance at this sample matches that claim as well. The table below shows how the ten QBs drafted #1 overall performed in passer rating, a basic metric that gives a rough measure of overall performance.
Jared Goff was the worst rookie QB in this sample, but he has gone on to have a long career as a quality NFL QB. Trevor Lawrence and Andrew Luck, two other quality NFL starters, also rank near the bottom. Jameis Winston and Sam Bradford, the only two QBs who did not become long-term starters (Bryce Young TBD), rank in the top half.
There’s really no predicting what path Caleb Williams will follow at this point. Maybe he makes a big leap like Joe Burrow and turns into a star. Maybe he settles in as a mid-tier starter like Baker Mayfield. Maybe he completely busts like Jameis Winston. 2025 should give us real answers in that regard. PFF has found that we generally know who QBs are by the end of their 2nd season, and while recent exceptions like Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts have broken out in year 3, that’s still the most common path to stardom.
If Caleb Williams is going to be a high-level NFL QB, he should play at that level already in 2025. We’ve seen recent QBs like Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, and Trevor Lawrence go from mediocre rookie seasons to stellar play in year two, and Bears fans can only hope that Caleb Williams joins that list in 2025.