If you watched Caleb Williams last Saturday (or really at any point over the second half of the season), and your first response was to blather about completion percentage or a couple of ugly misfires, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re missing the forest for the trees.
A few sprays here and there contribute to Williams’ often-low completion percentages, but so does the combination of his play style and what the offense asks of him. This is not a cheap passing game littered with screens, RPOs and quick game. Head coach Ben Johnson threw Williams into the fire Saturday, and the QB eventually walked out alive.
Even for Williams and the Bears, the game plan against the Packers was aggressive.
According to TruMedia, there have been 93 games this season in which a quarterback threw at least 40 passes, playoffs included. Williams, at 4.2 percent, had the lowest percentage of passes at or behind the line of scrimmage among those games. It was also the lowest mark in any such game over the last five seasons, which expands to 543 individual performances.
Moreover, 60.4 percent of Williams’ throws traveled at least to the sticks, the second-highest mark in a game of 40-plus pass attempts this season, and the highest in a win. It was also the seventh-highest clip in a 40-plus-attempt game over the last five seasons.
Oh, and Williams threw 41.7 percent of his attempts at least 15 yards, the highest rate in a game with that kind of passing volume since Aaron Rodgers against the Lions in Week 17 of the 2019 season.
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