Happy victory Thursday Bears fans! The cardiac Bears v2.0 strike again (the 2001 team is starting to get really nervous the 2025 is going to yank their moniker fully.) After leading the majority of the game,
the Minnesota Vikings scored 2 late 4th quarter touchdowns and suddenly the Bears were sensing déjà vu all over again from week 1.
But Devin Duvernay and the Chicago Bears had, on again, different plans. Returning the ensuing kickoff after the Vikings took a late lead, Durvernay returned the ball 56 yards to the Vikings 40, setting up the Bears with the easy task of picking up a few yards for their kicker, who eventually nailed the game winning 48-yard field goal giving your Chicago Bears a 19-17 walk-off victory over the Minnesota Vikings, their 5th come from behind victory on the season.
It was a shaky first half for the Bears offense, as Brian Flores and the Minnesota Vikings defense were playing in what was essentially a do or die game for their season amidst another highly competitive NFC North race. Flores dialed up a blitz on 77.8% of drop backs for Caleb Williams, and he responded well overall.
In fact, on the season Caleb Williams has responded well overall to dealing with pressure, through week 11 he is the 12th best QB per EPA/drop back when it comes to dealing with it.
Ben Johnson also came prepared to deal with the extra pressure expected from Flores’ defense, as the Bears operated out of 12 personnel (1 RB/2 WR/2 TE) 46% of the time, 13 personnel (1 RB/1 WR/ 3 TE) 11% of the time, and lined up with an additional offensive lineman 13% of the time. All numbers that best their season averages (32%/3%/6%).
The offensive line, without a doubt has also played a huge factor into this success. Using composite ratings from PFF, ESPN, and SIS (Sports Info Solutions) the Bears boast a top 5 pass protection rating.
The addition of Drew Dalman, Joe Thuney, and Jonah Jackson has been understated, bringing stability and elite level play at the interior of the offensive line. As a group the have played 676 of 680 total offensive snaps together. Numbers we could only wish for in 2024.
After weathering a first half storm, Caleb come out solid in the second half. Completing 9-of-16 passes for 121 yards, of those 7 incompletions, 3 were drops, including 2 throws that were graded as “Great”, and 2 balls that were thrown away. This gives him a very robust 85.7% adjusted completion percentage for the second half. This all resulted in a second half that say just 2 plays being graded negatively.
All said and done, through 11 weeks in the NFL season, the Bears are still the most explosive offensive in the league despite the various struggles we’ve seen from it, all the way working with a first year quarterback and head coach combination. And as an added plus, Caleb has started a brand new streak.
All that said, it think it’s time we dive into some numbers, break down some plays and find out how Caleb Williams really did in week 11!
Benchmarks
(Totals and averages are all before week 11: Season totals are underlined, Season averages in Italics)
C/A: 178/293 (60.8%) | 19.8/32.6 (60.7%) | 16/32 (50.0%)
Yards: 2136 | 27.3 | 193
Touchdowns: 16 | 1.8 | 0
Turnovers: 4 | 0.4 | 0
QB at Fault Sacks: 7 | 0.8 | 2
aDOT: 9.0 | 11.5
Passer Rating: 92.2 | 68.9
True Passer Rating: 130.6 | 95.1
Time to Throw: 3.10s | 3.15s
Time to Pressure: 2.66s | 2.72s
Pressure Rate: 31.79% | 36.84%
On-Target Rate: 63.2% | 69.2%
Poor Play Rate / Big Play Rate: 11.3% PPR / 8.7% BPR | 7.7% PPR / 10.3% BRP
Game Scorecard
The full grading sheet for each play can be found here.
Game Notes
- NFL Passer Rating / True Passer Rating / PFF Grade: 68.9 / 95.1 / 66.4
- The average passer rating in the 2025 season sits at 92.7 through week 11. His 68.9 NFL Passer Rating would be considered a bad game.
- A 95.1 TPR falls into the Below Average range, with 100 serving as the baseline for “Average.”
- A caveat that goes into TPR I put into TPR was that if a quarterback completes less than 55% of his passes the bonus he gets from the ADOT component is halved. If just 2 of the drops were caught, Caleb’s TPR would jump to 119.1.
- And on the PFF scale, a score of 60 or higher is Average. With a 66.4 Caleb Williams’ day was considered an average outing.
- On-Target Throws: Season Average: 63.2% | Week 11 vs. Vikings: 69.2%
- 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.
- Despite seeing a blitz on near 80% of his drop backs, his On-Target throwing percentage was 6% higher than the his season average. It was a struggle early, but the game plan shifted and the Bears delt withe pressure as a unit much better overall in the 2nd half, which feels ironic to say since both sacks happened in the 2nd half.
- Short-Level Passing (Behind LOS – 9 yards): 12/15 | 80.0% On-Target
- Deep-Level Passing (10–20+ yards): 6/11 | 54.5% 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.
- 7.7% Poor Play Rate (turnover-worthy + poorly graded plays) against a 10.3% Big Play Rate (great + elite graded plays)
- Another week of positive regression in poor play rate and positive growth in big play rate. Caleb missed a few deep throws early down the sideline, but bounced back nicely over the middle a few times later in the game.
- Time To Throw: This week Caleb’s time to throw dropped from 3.35 seconds to 3.15 seconds this week.
- On 39 graded plays we saw 11 plays being extended for a total of 55.45 seconds, or 5.04 time to throw on those plays.
- His time to throw when not extending a play was just 2.14 seconds this week.
- Pressure: Despite facing a 77.8% blitz rate from Brian Flores and the Minnesota defense, Caleb Williams saw just a 36.84% pressure rate. Which is above the season average number, but outlines how well both the offensive line and Caleb Williams handled the heat put on them nearly constantly on Sunday.
- Drops: Drops have played a huge part of the offensive struggles the last 3 weeks.
- Heading into the Bengals game in week 9 the Bears had recorded just 7 drops in 7 games on the year, a rate of just 4.5% per on-target attempt.
- Since week 9, that rate has ballooned to 8.5%, with a drop rate of 16.3% in the last 3 games alone. Bears receivers dropped 3 passes against the Bengals, 5 passes against the Giants, and 3 more against the Vikings.
- Play-Action: Play-Action continues to be a surprising strength from Caleb, he went 8-for-11 on Sunday for 88 yards, a 96.0 Passer Rating, and a 141.5 TPR.
- One of those incompletions also happens to be the deep dig DJ Moore dropped in the 4th quarter.
- We touched on this last week, but with his week 11 performance, he has already surpassed his 2024 play-action output; 788 yards in 2024 vs. 859 yards in 2025.
- He is also markedly better there in PFF grading, 65.6 score in 2024 vs. 79.4 score in 2025.
- Deep Ball: Caleb went just 1-for-8 deep (20+ yards) this week, continuing a downward trend in his deep ball accuracy. Or is it?
- 3 of those throws were throw aways and another was dropped by Luther Burden, effectively making him 2-fo-5.
- Per PFF Caleb is currently 20th in the league with a 33.3% completion % on deep throws. When adjusting that for the 5 drops Bears receivers have accounted for on deep passing that number jumps to 43.8% which is the 8th best in the league by adjusted completion %. In summary: No worries, we just need our pass catchers…to catch.
- Under Center: For the first time in Caleb Williams’ career he operated under center more than from shotgun. In 39 total drop backs, Caleb took 20 from under center and 19 in shotgun. It’s a long ways away from his 2024 splits, where he operated under center at just a 14.1% rate.
Play Reviews
The plays we’ll be reviewing are presented in the order they occurred in the game.
Analysis: We open with one of the deep misses early in the game. Caleb is working out of the shotgun, with Colston Loveland, DJ Moore and Rome Odunze in the bunch formation at the bottom of the screen. The Bears are funning a levels concept which gives Caleb reads at ever depth of the field. There’s a few things I like from the get go on this.
1.) The come out of the huddle in a hurry, which catches the Vikings defense unprepared, Caleb snaps the ball while the defense is still sorting things out.
2.) The bunch formation only serves to further confuse the Vikings defense, as they are left to sort out responsibilities on the fly.
These two things combine to get DJ Moore wide open running the Corner route, Caleb does a good job recognizing his open man and fires at the top of his drop, putting decent air under the ball, however he still overshot his receiver by 5 yards, as the ball sails over him incomplete. A early missed opportunity.
Analysis: Now onto where Caleb has been the best this year: The intermediate and deep middle of the field. This play comes of the tail of the botched handoff to D’Andre Swift, setting up a 2nd and 24. Rome is running 17-yard dig, and has all the space in the world as the Vikings are playing in off coverage.
Caleb has Swift and Loveland underneath if he doesn’t like the depth the intermediate defenders take. But he rips one over their outstretched hand, into the waiting arms of Rome, who hauls it in and gains a few more yards after catch, setting up a much easier 3rd and 1 situation. Caleb’s ability to attack the middle of the field remains to be one of my favorite skills in his repertoire.
Analysis: The next play I believe is the result of either a misjudgment or miscommunication between Caleb Williams and D’Andre Swift. The play is simple enough with Colston Loveland running an Out and DJ Moore running a 10-yard dig and Rome Odunze running the stop route at the top.
The read is simple enough, Caleb starts with Rome, and with a defender trailing he moves off him to the bottom side, where DJ does come put but Caleb senses the pocket weakening, and bails to his left. Swift does a good job bailing with him, but it’s me belief the issue from this play stems from Caleb expecting Swift to cut up field, which in my opinion is the correct play due to there being no over the top defense, but Swift continue running his route flat, causing the incompletion to look worse than it is. A opportunity to get on the same page in the future.
Analysis: The next play is just something I’d like to highlight as growth and his innate skill. This play is run out of play-action, and is designed to attack the middle of the field with Loveland and Odunze running the crossers, with Loveland running the trail. But like most of the Bears’ drop backs, the Vikings blitz. And as Caleb is finishing his drop back he has pressure immediate in his face. He makes a quick decision and fires to his hot receiver, Cole Kmet in the left flat, where the blitz came from, turning a potential loss into a pick up of 5 on 1st down, keeping the Bears on schedule.
Cool under pressure and finding his hot route, something simple, but I love seeing it.
Analysis: Back to more bread and butter of this offense, deep digs attacking the middle of the field. Rome Odunze is running the occupy route, attacking the middle of the field to open a throwing window for Luther Burden who is running the 15-yard dig. Caleb finishes his drop, hitches, and first with a bit of anticipation hitting Burden in stride who begins to turn up field but gets hit, and drops the ball. This would have been around a 22-23 yard pick up if not for the drop. It feels like over the last 3 weeks the Bears have left hundreds of yards on the field with drops, I hope those jugs machines get worked into dust.
Analysis: The last play I picked was to highlight an area of potential growth I would like to see. From what I can tell this is a simple one read and throw it if it’s open situation with Rome Odunze running the stop route in-between the dropping linebackers. The throw is there especially with any type of anticipation, but Caleb moves off it, and trys to extend the play to the right side of the field. With nothing there he eventually throws the ball away, living to fight another down, but missing an easy completion.
I think this a big area Caleb can do better on, this is a simple look that is designed to put us in a better position on 3rd down, but for whatever reason Caleb doesn’t pull the trigger on it. So while in the end a negative play wasn’t created out of it, the potential of passing over a positive one, a gimme positive one at that, marks this as an area of something I would like to see more of him just ripping it as soon as it’s there for him.
Summary
His final scores of 1st Half (0.40) / 2nd Half (3.25) / Game (3.65) gives him a solid “Above Average” game grade for week 11.
Of the seven quarterbacks I grade Williams placed 3rd this week, putting up another solid performance, now 3 weeks running. He has finished in the top 3 of quarterback grades in those weeks, including two first place games. The stats might not reflect it, but the truth always lies somewhere within the tape.
Weekly scores of every QB I grade can be found here.
The Bears have a chance to claim their second 4 game win streak when they return home to play host to the Pittsburgh Steelers. As of this moment, Aaron Rodgers status remains in question with a broke wrist on his non throwing hand. The Bears hold a commanding 12-1 edge over the Steelers when playing them at home. the only loss coming in 1995 in a high scoring overtime loss. As always, Bear down, and I hope to see you all next week enjoying a Bears victory!
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.
