At this point, it just feels personal from Pro Football Focus as far as Caleb Williams is concerned.
Okay, not really. But these Week 6 grades just feel like trolling.
When I saw that Williams, who completed 30 of 36 passes for 305 yards and a touchdown, wasn’t among the five highest-graded quarterbacks of the week—Drake Maye led the list with an offensive 92.1 grade—but J.J. McCarthy (74.3) did, I knew I was in for a laugh. I wasn’t (or was?) disappointed.
Williams’ efforts, which included a perfect
24-of-24 passing from a clean pocket, earned him a 65.0 offensive grade, a 70.7 passing grade, and the cover photo of PFF’s “Statistical Review of NFL Week 6,” which takes us “WAY beyond the box score” (likely in an attempt to show us why Williams wasn’t as impressive as we think he was).
We’ve already seen this from PFF in regards to Williams this season, as his Week 1 performance earned him a similarly “meh” grade despite 269 yards passing, four total touchdowns, and a passer rating of 124.1. And sure, aside from the 83.3% completion rate and clinical operation of the offense, the box score wasn’t that groundbreaking. Also, as the graders would likely point out, the four sacks he took in this game and high time-to-throw probably didn’t help his cause.
That brings us back to the goalpost-moving when it comes to Williams’ game in general, and why he’s so difficult to quantify for conventional evaluators and social media naysayers alike.
Last year, the knock on Williams was that he didn’t complete enough passes, despite being one of the most explosive playmakers in the game. Now that he’s cleaned that up—his 72.5% completion rate currently leads the NFL—he’s getting dinged for taking too many sacks, throwing the ball away too much when under duress, and not taking more chances down the field.
It’s always something.
He’s never going to be a statuesque surgeon from the pocket who lives by the 2.5-second stopwatch benchmark, either, which is going to make people question his decision-making when he holds the ball and creates.
But no matter what the graders and haters say, he doesn’t have to.
Though he’s had a limited sample size thus far in 2026 due to injury, Williams has shown he can improve the biggest area of need people identified for him heading into his third season: operating within structure. Give him a clean pocket, and he’ll destroy you in a way he might’ve struggled to last season. And you already know what he can do when it’s time to make magic.
Bottom line: let the PFF graders talk about Williams however they want to. Let people talk down about him because of his passing charts.
All of it is just fueling Williams to snatch souls and keep the Bears pushing toward Super Bowl contention. Hopefully, a date with Maye and the New England Patriots on Thursday night, two years after the Pats humbled Chicago at home, serves as more motivation to prove the doubters wrong.
If these performances are “mid,” then I can’t wait to see what “good” looks like.
