Caleb Williams is going through a difficult transition. For the past several years, he's always played football a certain way. It involved sitting in shotgun, taking the snap, and if somebody isn't open immediately, just take off and run until that changes. He became a star in high school and college with this strategy. The Chicago Bears quarterback likely felt it would be more of the same in the NFL. Those 68 sacks he took as a rookie said otherwise. If Williams were going to become a professional, he'd need somebody who could rebuild his game from the ground up. That is why Ben Johnson was hired.
The new head coach had two options. Either he could try to build an offense from scratch that best fit Williams, or he could push the quarterback to learn how to play in the one Johnson built in Detroit. He chose the latter, knowing full well it would be a difficult transition. Learning such a complicated system comes with inevitable setbacks. Among them is overwhelming the QB with a barrage of information. Johnson admitted at his latest press conference that the volume has actually gone up in recent weeks, and it's impacting Williams' processing speed.
"We have more motions than we did the first four games. … He’s making sure he’s checking off all the boxes he’s got to check off before the snap. Because of that, the post-snap play suffers a little bit."
Ben Johnson seems willing to accept these issues.
The idea is that by putting Williams through this now, it will pay off later. Once the quarterback experiences the offense at its fullest for long enough, the information won't overwhelm him anymore. That is when his processing will pick up speed, and he'll start making more accurate throws. Williams himself even admitted that it would probably not be until next season that he would be at the same level of understanding the system as Ben Johnson. Until then, he is doing the best he can to digest everything.
Experts agree that Williams has taken massive steps from where he was at the start of the season. His mastery of the pre-snap work has drastically improved. He doesn't make bad decisions anymore. Everything comes down to him playing more on time and hitting the open throws when he's supposed to. That is often the toughest hurdle for young quarterbacks who have never played that way. Johnson is staying patient. He knows rushing the process won't help. All he can do is continue grinding on his quarterback until everything falls into place.
