Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz, senior NFL reporter Charles Robinson, and NFL writer Frank Schwab discuss whether the Bears offensive struggles falls upon rookie QB Caleb Williams or the coaching staff not putting him in a place to succeed. Hear the full conversation on “Football 301” – and subscribe on , , or
Video Transcript
I don’t know whether to put the blame on the Bears offense on Caleb for trying to do too much of go off script or on the Bears for basically running an offense that he shouldn’t be running in his 2nd 3rd NFL game because to me it is more on Caleb of get the ball out.
We all know how many pressures the Texans had the other night.
And to me that’s a quarterback step, Caleb has got to hit his third step, fifth step, whatever it is and get the ball out.
Don’t play UFC your final season there, run around and try to make something happen.
Where does it lie to you?
You’ve studied it more than I have.
Yeah, I mean, I think here’s the thing that I think is the responsibility of the team.
It’s incumbent upon you to say to Caleb, hey, look, there are gonna be times where you just gotta throw the ball away.
Um, you, you just gotta take whatever the hot read is and, and let’s ultimately move forward.
I actually, I’m, I’m the opposite.
I put on the Bears right now.
I think Shane Waldron, the offensive coordinator came in.
He definitely is someone who leans into the running game.
Ok. Well, especially against the Texans.
Why did you just completely abandon the run game, even as a tool to say to the Texans?
Ok, you can keep coming, but we’re gonna run a running back into your teeth at times where you’re just not constantly badgering our quarterback into throwing off rhythm, you know, putting balls in bad places or just taking massive hits.
You have to do something from a game planning perspective to try and limit and protect Cale Williams and I don’t think the Bears, uh, did that well at all.
I definitely put that on them.
And I think one of the thing I would say is when I look at Washington and Washington has a worse offensive line than Chicago.
They absolutely do and Washington knowing they have a worse offensive line, ok. And then Washington saying we’re just gonna have to do some things offensively that don’t fit who, uh, Jayden Daniels is unbelievably great downfield passer, one of the greatest deep balls in college football.
We drafted that, but to accomplish that, Jaden’s gotta hold on to the ball and we just can’t afford to do that right now.
So we have to take that part of the game off the table for Jaden and protect him.
We have to sacrifice it now and slowly open it up as we gone on.
The Bears have not done that.
They said we’re just gonna do what Caleb does and hope that it works on this level and it’s not.