Can Caleb Williams improve in sophomore season?

Yahoo

24-05-2025

Yahoo Sports' Nate Tice, Matt Harmon and Charles McDonald explain why there's optimism for the Bears' young quarterback with a new coaching staff. Hear the full conversation on 'Football 301' - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
I just think he was so doomed kind of from the beginning.
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I just don't think that that offense was ever going to work.
I just think that receiver room was so poorly constructed.
They had a lot of talent, they had a lot of names in there, but there wasn't.
Like clear-cut roles, like this guy's doing this and this guy's doing that.
It felt kind of mishmashed together.
There was obviously a lot of ego and politicking issues.
So that's like the first thing that comes to my mind.
You know, I think there's been like kind of kind of a discussion of can he be like a Jared Goff type of quarterback for Ben Johnson, which I don't think you want Caleb Williams being Jared Goff.
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They're two very different players.
I really don't think we could talk enough about how bad it was last year.
And obviously, all the metrics bear that out, you know, he's 2.
6 and adjusted yards per attempt.
He's 31st in, in EPA per dropback.
He's 33rd in success rate among guys who had 200+ attempts.
Like, it was bad.
The metrics were bad, the results were bad.
But I think, again, just my, my original point there was, I just do really feel like he, and a lot of these players here were set up to fail.
I hope that they be playing in a more stable environment with Ben Johnson and hopefully these offensive line, uh, uh, Upgrades are at least going to get them back to a stable-ish platform.
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He can actually just show it and let it rip because, yeah, I'm with Matt.
The the Jared Goff stuff.
I, I, I would hope that you can think Kyle Williams can eventually do a little bit more than Jared Goff is doing for your offense.
And that's not to say that Jared Goff isn't a quality quarterback, because I think he's obviously proven that, but just not like that extra gear of athleticism that I think makes you go.
I just hope that this year in this environment that he can remember that.
Like skill set wise, he's one of the baddest dudes in the league, uh, and that's still there.
So hopefully they can just get an environment to coax it out of him.
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It's not that he's not watching film.
When you go in each week, you go, all right, we're playing the Seahawks here, man, on 3rd down, they're going to run a lot of quarters on, on first you've ever watched for some blitzes here.
OK, this is the percentages of that.
What I think Cale was referring to is he never had those extra meetings going like, all right, I put on the film.
What's our game plan?
What should I be focusing on?
But the fact that he could handle so much, they're doing no huddle, where he's signaling everything, um, and calling the plays at the line without listening to the headset.
I can tell he's not because he's just doing it right away, um, protection stuff, that stuff is so advanced, Matt, what you said, maybe it wasn't the best thing because it's putting so much on a young quarterback that hasn't played, um, but the fact I think that the long-term growth, the long term benefit of that will It will pay divi dividends, even if it just was such a rough year, but I'm optimistic.
I am pretty excited to see what this looks like.