Priority No. 1 will be the development of last year’s top draft pick
Following a protracted search, the Chicago Bears hired former Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson as their next head coach. Johnson was considered arguably the single-best candidate on the market, and landing him is a coup for a Bears franchise that has desperately needed an injection of some kind of life for quite some time.
Priority No. 1 for Johnson will no doubt be getting the best possible results out of 2024 No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams. Williams had an up-and-down rookie season, at times looking like a future star and at many others looking overwhelmed and even helpless behind a hapless offensive line and inside an unimaginative offensive system. He completed 62.5% of his passes at an average of 6.3 yards per attempt while throwing 20 touchdown passes and six interceptions. He led the league with an incredible 68 sacks taken, and his passing success rate was a mere 40.3%. Needless to say, it was not the debut season the Bears wanted.
That is likely the primary reason why the Bears landed on Johnson, who has shown an ability to get the most out of his players, and a knack for putting them in the best possible position to succeed. During his time in Detroit, Jared Goff took significant steps forward, and the Lions as a whole became one of the most efficient and explosive offenses in the NFL. Things won’t be exactly the same in Chicago, but it’s still worth considering how Johnson can help Williams become the best version of himself.
The single-biggest thing Johnson can do for Williams is give him some easy answers. Those were almost never available to him during his rookie season, and it showed. He ranked 32nd in expected completion percentage among 44 qualified passers, according to NFL.com’s NextGen Stats. Goff ranked seventh among the same group of players. The Lions ran play action or a screen pass on nearly 50% of Goff’s dropbacks, per Tru Media, while the Bears did the same on only 33.4% of Williams’ dropbacks. Goff’s rate of “true” dropbacks (i.e. no play action or screens) was the lowest among qualified starters, while Williams’ ranked 14th out of those 36 players. Giving Williams more of those answers through play design should do him well.
Johnson’s diverse background should help him in those efforts. During his time with the Lions and previous to that the Miami Dolphins, he was at different times a coach in the quarterbacks room, the wide receiver room and the tight end room. Having your hand in all different parts of the offense is part of how you build an offense with the type of stylistic diversity that the Lions had over these past several years. The experience as a tight ends coach, in particular, is valuable because of the position’s role in the run game. Being exposed to more of the run-focused elements of the offense than you are when coaching quarterbacks and receivers can have real value when building out a system.
Of course, he will still need to evolve his offense. Williams and Goff are not remotely similar players. Goff relies almost entirely on timing and precision, while Williams is often at his best when making plays outside of structure. Goff is an under-center play-action maestro, while Williams has largely operated out of the shotgun during his college and professional careers.
Johnson should be able to marry those two worlds together, as he often did in Detroit. Having a defined system with real structure and goals on a down-to-down basis should also make Williams feel more comfortable than he often did during his rookie year, when he at times looked like he was more focused on avoiding making negative plays than on making good ones. For a player with his skill set, that’s not what you want. His best trait is the ability to make something out of nothing. Taking that club out of his bag just neuters his ability to add his imprint to the offense.
For Williams to truly find success, though, Johnson and the rest of the organization absolutely have to find a way to improve the offensive line in front of him. That group was a mess throughout Williams’ rookie season, and it impaired his ability to play his best — even if he also contributed to the protection and sack issues through his own indecision and hesitancy when it came to reading defenses. The Bears have a pair of solid tackles, but the interior line — which was a major strength for Johnson’s Lions — desperately needs to be upgraded.
If Chicago can surround Williams with the right group of players, Johnson should be able to scheme him into much more success than he had as a rookie. After that, it’s up to Williams to make the offense more than the sum of its parts. The talent is there, and the belief is that if you put him in the right offensive infrastructure, he will be able to actualize it. Making Johnson the architect of that effort is merely the first step in the right direction.
