All good things must come to an end.
But even if they do, there are good things to glean from those things that come to an end. At least that will be my stances after the Chicago Bears’ 5 game winning streak came to a halt at a frigid Lambeau Field. A game that saw the Green Bay Packers defend their frozen tundra and take home a 28-21 win, stamped by a game sealing interception in the endzone by Keisean Nixon.
It was a slow start for the Bears offense and Caleb Williams, which seems to be a theme over
the last few weeks, but after a first half that saw the Bears dominated in just about every facet on the offensive side of the ball, the Bears came out in the second half on offense and put up 18 points, 235 yards and 15 first downs while controlling the ball for over 20 of the 30 second half minutes.
And before we get into it, no, DJ Moore was not open on that throw!
This was a game I felt like past Bears teams would roll over and die after they come out of the locker room for the second half. I normally text one of my buddies during the game and he said as much: “This feels like a game we’re going to lose 35-10, with a late garbage time touchdown coming in our favor.”
But it wasn’t. A sentiment I’ve been echoing all season long was on display; “This team is different.”
On the road, against a Superbowl ready defense the Bears responded, tying the game at 21 all in the 4th Quarter with a fantastically designed 1-yard touchdown (ran out of 13 personnel!) to rookie Tight End Colston Loveland. The play was originally supposed to go to Theo Benedet who motioned across the formation but had his legs cut out from under him. Caleb Williams keeps his composure and moves on to his next read lofting a touch pass over the heads of Packers defenders was an easy touchdown.
He also accounted for one of the most improbable touchdowns I’ve seen a Bears quarterback pull off.
A throw that per NFL Next Gen stats has just a 16.9% probability of being completed. It showcased all those elite abilities we’ve grown to expect from Williams. Creativity, poise, accuracy on the run, arm strength, and that clutch gene.
The loss obviously snaps the Bears 5 game win streak. But gives the Bears a shot to close out the season with year another 4 game win streak with a slate of games that includes 3 home games of the last 4 remaining on the schedule.
Anyways, that’s looking a bit ahead, it’s time to look at some metrics, notes and dive into some play review!
Benchmarks
(Totals and averages are all before week 14: Season totals are underlined, Season averages in Italics)
C/A: 230/396 (58.1%) | 19.2/33 (58.1%) | 17/36 (47.2%)
Yards: 2722 | 226.8 | 186
Touchdowns: 17 | 1.4 | 2
Turnovers: 5 | 0.5 | 1
QB at Fault Sacks: 11 | 0.9 | 0
aDOT: 9.1 | 6.9
Passer Rating: 88.2 | 76.6
True Passer Rating: 125.2 | 94.0
Time to Throw: 3.00s | 3.46s
Time to Pressure: 2.61s | 2.57s
Pressure Rate: 30.92% | 45.00%
On-Target Rate: 64.1% | 75.0%
Poor Play Rate / Big Play Rate: 10.7% PPR / 7.5% BPR | 7.3% PPR / 9.8% BRP
Game Scorecard
The full grading sheet for each play can be found here.
Game Notes
- NFL Passer Rating / True Passer Rating / PFF Grade: 96.6 / 94.0 / 60.6
- The average passer rating in the 2025 season sits at 91.1 through week 11. His 76.6 NFL Passer Rating would be considered a below average game.
- A 94.0 TPR falls into the Below Average range, with 100 serving as the baseline for “Average.”
- And on the PFF scale, a score of 60 or higher is Average. With a 60.6 Caleb Williams’ day was considered an average outing.
- This mirrors last weeks dichotomy quiet a bit, albeit in a much better quarterback grade when compared to last week in Philadelphia. Watching live it seems bad but stepping back using the frame of reference of all 22 you begin to realize a lot of those throw aways were good answers to immediate pressure blowing up the timing of things.
- On-Target Throws: Season Average: 64.1% | Week 14 vs. Packers: 75.0%
- Reminder: Completion % ≠ On-Target %. On-target throws are only counted on aimed passes, so throw aways, spikes, and deflections at the line aren’t counted. And drops are counted as on-target.
- This is the 7th consecutive week in which Caleb’s On Target % saw a rate higher than his season average, and this was his 2nd most on target game, 2nd only to week 9 against the Bengals where he posted a 78.6% on target %.
- Short-Level Passing (Behind LOS – 9 yards): 16/19 | 84.2% On-Target
- Deep-Level Passing (10–20+ yards): 6/9 | 66.7% On-Target
- Reminder: Completion % ≠ On-Target %. On-target throws are only counted on aimed passes, so throw aways, spikes, and deflections at the line aren’t counted. And drops are counted as on-target.
- 7.3% Poor Play Rate (turnover-worthy + poorly graded plays) against a 9.8% Big Play Rate (great + elite graded plays)
- Poor Play Rate continues to see a dip, while Big Play Rate saw a big spike this week, on the back of 4 Great and Elite throws made in the 2nd half.
- 26-yard over-the-shoulder throw and catch to Cole Kmet down the sideline.
- 1-yard keyhole touchdown throw to Olamide Zaccheaus with Micah Parsons in his lap.
- 27-yard Deep comeback to Luther Burden III lofted over an intermediate defender perfectly.
- 24-yard scramble drill throw to Devin Duvernay into tight coverage deep.
- Poor Play Rate continues to see a dip, while Big Play Rate saw a big spike this week, on the back of 4 Great and Elite throws made in the 2nd half.
- Time to Throw: Had a spike this week in time to throw, up to 3.46 seconds, early pressure forcing Caleb to extend and the reliance on play-action both played a part here:
- Play Extension: 3/8, 62 yards, 65.6 Passer Rating, 2 rushes for 11 yards 4.78s time to throw.
- Play-Action: 15/20 144 yards, 3 throwaways, 2 touchdowns, 1 interception, 107.1 Passer Rating 3.72s time to throw.
- Get Rid of it, Caleb: After going the first 10 weeks of the season seeing only 10 total throw aways, over the last 4 weeks that number has climbed to 29, a mark that now leads the league.
- Over the last 4 weeks, Caleb is completing 51.4% of his passes, but factoring out just the 19 throw aways alone the number becomes 59.7%. While still not exactly where we want to be completion % wise, throwaways definitely playing a factor.
- While an incompletion over a sack is a net gain, allowing the offense to live to fight another down, I would really like to see some of those neutrals turn into positives. Getting the ball more consistently to your hot routes or check downs will improve this offense leaps and bounds.
- The Curious Case of Third Downs: Caleb Williams has very quietly become one of the best passers on 3rd downs in the league.
- On 3rd downs he is among league leaders of creating 1st downs or touchdowns sitting at 7th in the league, with 55 total, per NFL Researcher.
- Also from NFL Researcher, Williams is also a leader among many statistical categories on 3rd down, including total touchdowns, passer rating, passing touchdowns, yards and completions over 10 yards.
- Under Pressure: The Packers pass rush came as advertised, generating a 45.00% pressure rate. Despite that, Caleb took just 1 sack, a sack that I attribute to the offensive line allowing a near untouched rusher.
- Caleb’s Sack Rate sits at 4.43% on the season, a drop of over 6% from the 10.79% mark in 2024, where he lead the league. He now sits 5th best in the league in that regard. Amazing turn around.
- His pressure to sack rate also is in a fantastic standing, after leading the league with a 28.2% of pressures turning into sacks, in 2025 that number is just 12.0%, good for 4th best in the league.
Play Reviews
The plays we’ll be reviewing are presented in the order they occurred in the game.
Analysis: We’re starting with an early miss, this is on the first drive where Caleb maybe has something with DJ Moore is the ball is perfect. However it’s nothing close to that. DJ is running a Deep In just past the sticks, Burden is running a shallow cross underneath and Zaccheaus is running the Deep Post. Caleb hesitates a hitch here, also as if he is second guessing the throw, he double hitches his throw which in turn chop up his footwork, the ball flutters and sails the ball well over the head of DJ, and the safety lurking behind him.
It would have been a very tight throw with the depth the underneath defenders got on the play, so maybe overthrowing here might have been the better option that underthrowing it into the underneath defense.
Analysis: We jump ahead to the 3rd quarter now, as we all know the first half did not have a whole lot to cover.
The Bears are driving finding themselves on the Packers 37. On the bottom of the formation the Bears have a levels concept going with 2 outs, and at the top of the screen Zaccheaus is running the Deep In, with Kmet providing a chip and release. The Packers have the routes bottles up and pressure forces Caleb to flush out of the pocket to his right. Kmet does the right thing and turns up field, and Caleb lofts a perfectly placed ball throwing with his patent jump throw, right over the trialing defenders head in the arms of Kmet for a big gain down the sideline.
All this was very reminiscent of the throw Caleb made in 2024 to D’Andre Swift against the Vikings. Gorgeous stuff.
Analysis: The Bears played out of play-action a lot in the 2nd half, this play was no different. Luther Burden and Cole Kmet are running a Cross concept, with Zaccheaus running a clear Go to open up space for his underneath receivers. Caleb fields the snap, executes the play fake rolls to his right and delivers an accurate ball just out of the reach of Quay Walker, hitting Kmet in stride, who for whatever reason can never keep his feet when hauling in a throw limiting this to 16 yards, when Kmet maybe picks up another 5-7 if he doesn’t hit the deck.
This drive would ultimately lead to a field goal to push the game to 14-21.
Analysis: The Bears ran this formation more than a handful of times on Sunday, and I really liked what it brought to the table as for as additional pass protection on the edges, in most cases the tight ends in the backfield helped chip edge’s getting a moving start to allow bigger impact on their chips. On this snap, Luther Burden III is running a deep Comeback at the top of the screen with Zaccheaus running a deep in on the bottom. Caleb identifies the 1 on 1 off coverage on Burden, fields the snap, and fires to Burden with anticipation (he begins his throwing motion when Burden is at about the Bears 40). The ball is layered perfectly over the intermediate defender getting to Burden with more than enough time for him to shake his defender and pick up nearly 10 yards of YAC.
This was a huge drive starting throw to get the Bears moving on the final drive.
Analysis: Onto the second big throw on the drive to put the Bears within striking distance to tie the game. Devin Duvernay is running a Deep Post route at the top of the screen, while DJ Moore and Colston Loveland run a combo Out/In on the bottom. With the way Caleb hitches with the ball it seems like he wants to throw the Post with anticipation but thinks better of it, sensing pressure on his back, he rolls out to the right.
Duvernay does a fantastic job flowing with his quarterback here and working his way towards the line of scrimmage to keep separation integrity. Caleb resets his base and fires a missile down field right on the money as the trailing defender closes on Duvernay. If this throw was any more towards the numbers it’s broken up but Caleb places this perfectly, rewarding Duvernay for staying alive in the play.
Analysis: Last play we’re looking at and it’s the throw we got sent home with. (Also I seemed to have uploaded the version without the play overlaid, apologies!)
I want to start by saying I personally love this call, for a few reasons:
1.) It shows upmost trust from Ben Johnson in his Quarterback, putting the ball in his hands in a do or die scenario, we just happened to die this time. This is especially satisfying for me because I’ve seen a lot of chatter about Ben not trusting Caleb, which is why our ground game has been so featured of late. (The truth is Ben’s offense has always been built upon the ground game, people just fall in the love with the gaudy numbers Jared Goff put up with Ben calling the plays.)
2.) The play was 100% there, the only reasons it doesn’t work this time was Caleb being a tick late on the throw, and Keisan Nixton peeling off his assignment of DJ Moore to cut underneath the throw to Kmet.
It’s draw up just like it was in Philadelphia, play-action into D’Andre Swift running into the flat, DJ Moore running behind the line of scrimmage and into the flat himself behind the pursuing defense, and Cole Kmet running the Corner route for the shot throw. The Packers were playing for the run on 4th down, so dialing up play-action into a throw over the top was a fantastic call, in my eyes.
Was it safe? No. But when has Ben Johnson ever been known to play it cautiously. Ben and Caleb went for the kill on the road against a Superbowl ready defense, and came up a few air yards short of pulling it off.
Summary
His final scores of 1st Half (0.05) / 2nd Half (3.15) / Game (3.20) gives him a higher end “Above Average” game grade for week 14.
Of the seven quarterbacks I grade Williams placed 1st this week. All active quarterbacks this week turned in average or better performances for the second week in a row, as it seems December is bringing out some of the best football from everyone.
Weekly scores of every QB I grade can be found here.
While the end result isn’t what we had hoped for, I come away from this game EXTREMELY encouraged that this thing is moving in the right direction and have a good amount of optimism that we will defend Soldier Field in 2 weeks.
The Bears will finish out the regular season playing 3 of their last 4 games at home, with the Cleveland Browns, and world beating Edge rusher Myles Garrett slated next. It will be interesting to see how Ben Johnson, Caleb Williams, and the Chicago Beats offense will attack and neutralize the leagues best pass rusher, and a solid defensive unit overall.
As always, Bear Down, and we will see you next week!
Gary Baugher Jr. is a rookie contributor to WCG, bringing football insight backed by over 16 years of experience in organized football and more than 30 years as a passionate fan of the game. You can follow him on Twitter at @iamcogs.
