The Bear Market Report - Caleb Williams Performed Offseason Alchemy Once Again In Transforming His Accuracy To 70.9%
Kevin Sabitus. Getty Images.Caleb Williams did it again. Not last night with his 308 yards vs a very good Patriots defense. Not last week with his 305 yards in Atlanta. I mean in the summer when he performed a second straight offseason of alchemy in turning his biggest weakness into gold. Accuracy.
He came off his rookie year with 68 sacks which trailed just David Carr for most sacks by a rookie. Randall Cunningham was the only non-rookie to ever have more than Caleb. The quants say sacks are usually a quarterback sack. So Caleb went to work and turned that problem into a legitimate strength with mind bending evasions. There was still a glaring weakness. Accuracy. The sticking point not many Bears fans wanted to acknowledge was an actual serious issue. And he's showing you why now that this second act of quarterback alchemy has taken place.
I blogged right before the season how we'd know if this magic were to occur. It would mean significant improvement with middle-depth accuracy which was literally bottom barrel vs qualified peers in the league. I mean like 35ish or so qualifying. It was abysmal.
Look at where he is now. Abracadabra. We truly have an elite quarterback in the city of Chicago.
Completion percentage over expected is a nuanced version of completion percentage that pretty much adjusts for depth of target. He was in the basement prior to this season from 10-19 yards out. These are typically your in-structure throws more likely than not. He was awful. Terrible. Notice a lot of the gray lines representing other quarterbacks tends to improve from 0-9 to 10-19. Not Caleb. His dropped like a rock. But look at his orange numbers for 2026. Near top of the league in that middle-depth zone, and he's the best in deep 20+ yard passes by a mile. By the way - we're talking air yards splits here. So screen passes would all go in the 0-9 bin. Just so we're clear.
I think it's fair to say he's getting more comfortable in the pocket. This might be his best pass of his career and I was in the house myself to see Chicago's Jumpman encore.
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This is exactly the signal I was looking for coming into the season. It's been a little hard to be fully convinced up until last night with the injury, the awful weather of that Vikings game, and the fact he was able to feast on a Carolina and Atlanta defense that's been less than average. But the Patriots are one of the better defenses in the league and it didn't matter.
Last year's style of play was not sustainable. Doing nothing for three quarters and playing super hero after was fun as hell to watch. But what we're seeing right now from the #1 overall pick of the last quarterback class that mattered (and might matter for a while) is every bit sustainable to do what Ryan Poles said he'd do from day one. Take the North and never give it back.
This is everything we hoped we'd get and more. And fun little fact for those who missed it during the offseason. I developed my own method for analyzing how to grade quarterbacks by interception quality (weird thought, I know) and while we already knew Caleb has thrown the least interceptions for any quarterbacks first 1,000 attempts, even when he does throw interceptions they were the least detrimental to the team out of any qualifying quarterback in the last 25 or so years. That's insane.
I was hard on Caleb around this time last year. I stand by it. He was bad against laughable defenses and with an elite run game to help him. I went into this year hoping we'd see something like what he did with sacks the offseason before and my god he sure went out and did it.
I'm all in (OK well just $50). Anything is now on the table with this team and with Caleb Williams.
