Caleb Williams is learning the hard way that the NFL is a different animal than college ball. His Week 2 performance was not much better than his debut as the Texans defense sacked him a whopping 7 times. During the final moments of the game, the offense turned the ball over on downs at its own 40-yard line.
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Williams has struggled to live up to the hype that has followed him around since he won the Heisman Trophy. However, NFL legend Micheal Irvin saw something positive from Williams against Houston.
He highlighted that the Bears QB was more in control, playing organized football, making timely throws, and sticking to the script. According to Irvin, this puts the rookie quarterback at the same level as Mahomes, who excels in this aspect of QB play:
“Once he masters that on-time, on-script football, then all of his unorganized, off-script football can be very effective. That’s exactly what Patrick Mahomes does all the time. Now we put this kid in the same breath as Patrick Mahomes, let’s give him time to catch his breath.”
According to Irvin, Williams must master the on-script part of shot-calling before bringing other things like athleticism into his game.
Those other things, according to the legendary WR, become effective when you conquer the on-script part and the opposition defense tries to come up with different schemes and plans to stop the script.
Irvin believes in the Bears and their plan for the rookie QB and thinks they have finally found a franchise QB if they can “resist their nature” to destroy perfectly good Quarterbacks.
Williams increased his passing stats from week 1, amassing 174 yards on 37 passing attempts, and completing 62.2% of his passes. He also rushed for 44 yards on five carries.
However, he still looked miserable out there, taking seven sacks and throwing 2 costly interceptions. It is this aspect of the game that Irvin talked about.
The Bears’ defense had to do much of the heavy lifting, as the offense sputtered and stumbled through the game. Put bluntly, the Bears offense is not good.
They aim to integrate a rookie quarterback and a new offensive coordinator, while also dealing with injuries to some of their key offensive weapons. So the fault does not rest entirely on Williams. But with each passing game, it’s looking unlikelier that the Bears will be able to muster up any sort of offensive strength to chart a winning season.
