LAKE FOREST, Ill. — The Chicago Bears rode their run game to victory Friday against the Philadelphia Eagles to improve to 9-3. What has emerged as the strength of the Bears\u2019 offense has mitigated areas in which the team has struggled during a five-game win streak.<\/p>\n
Against the Eagles, second-year quarterback Caleb Williams notched the second-lowest completion percentage of his career (47.2%) and was off target on 27% of his throws. The Bears leaned on the run to generate 281 yards in the 24-15 win, while concerns over Williams\u2019 accuracy were raised.<\/p>\n
On Monday, coach Ben Johnson addressed those concerns in the bigger context of the passing game.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s got a role to play to get this pass game cleaned up,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe\u2019re winning in spite of our passing game, not because of it, and none of us are pleased with that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the Bears got on the practice field Tuesday, Johnson clarified those comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when I made that comment yesterday, it\u2019s easy to construe it as I\u2019m not happy with the quarterback,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThat\u2019s not the case whatsoever. He continues to get better each and every week, and I couldn\u2019t be more pleased with how he played last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what the stats say. Throw those out of the window. He\u2019s doing a really good job managing the ball game. That\u2019s step No. 1 for the quarterback. And so he\u2019s gonna continue to get better. The process is really good right now with how he approaches the week, the way he\u2019s taken the coaching, the way he\u2019s applying the coaching. I\u2019m very pleased with that. I think we\u2019re going to continue to see him ascend, whether the stats tell the story or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams\u2019 accuracy issues aren\u2019t the only reasons behind the passing game struggles, but they are notable. The former No. 1 pick ranks last in the NFL in completion percentage (58%) and completion percentage over expectation (-9%), according to Next Gen Stats.<\/p>\n
Against a defense that Johnson said \u201cmight be the best we\u2019ve seen all year,\u201d Williams\u2019 accuracy struggles could be exposed further when the Bears visit the Packers on Sunday. Green Bay has played zone defense on 68% of opponent dropbacks through 13 weeks. All five of Williams\u2019 interceptions this season have come against zone coverage.<\/p>\n
Williams said he feels the Bears are \u201cso close\u201d to the passing game producing consistently. And like his coach, the quarterback feels that his stat line from the Eagles game doesn\u2019t tell the full story of why certain passes didn\u2019t connect.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously I miss a pass and it looks a certain way to everybody and everybody doesn\u2019t know all the details,\u201d Williams said. \u201cSo you go into that and you look at the stats and you look at all these percentages and whoopty doo, right? So you go into all of that and then from there, we come back here and we actually look at the film. Was I in the right spot? Was my drop right? You always look at yourself first and then you go look at the other guys and were they at the right spot? Were they at the right spot at the right time? You try and tie those things together.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the fun part about football. That\u2019s the fun part about playing this position. It\u2019s the fun part about along season is you have these ups and ups and downs, you also have these moments where you may not be hitting on all cylinders. And then you have these moments where you know it feels like you can\u2019t miss. We\u2019re trying to get to the point where we feel like we can\u2019t miss.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAKE FOREST, Ill. — The Chicago Bears rode their run game to victory Friday against the Philadelphia Eagles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,142674,48,134662,514,82],"class_list":["post-321681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-caleb-williams-sports-football-player-player-statscom-1286445","tag-canada","tag-chicago-bears-sports-football-team-team-statscom-326","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}