Is it time to worry about Caleb Williams and the Bears?

LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Caleb Williams yelled as he stomped away. During an individual period at a training camp last weekend, Williams and the other Chicago Bears quarterbacks were engaged in a rapid-fire throwing competition, aiming at targets in a net.

Williams’ accuracy was off, and his emotional reaction, which was caught on video by fans during an open practice, sparked a social media firestorm. Was it an indication of bigger problems with a team that is under a microscope with first-year coach Ben Johnson, who is expected to develop the former No. 1 draft pick into a franchise quarterback while guiding the team to playoff contention?

Or did the frustration simply reflect Williams’ competitive nature while dealing with the ups and downs of learning a complicated new offense?

General manager Ryan Poles wasn’t worried.

“I actually think it’s pretty cool,” Poles told ESPN about the uproar over the video. “I knew there was a bad practice. I’ve seen clips on Twitter. I didn’t know it was a national crisis of Caleb struggling.”

Before anyone calls for backup Tyson Bagent to take snaps with the first team, consider that the Bears are practicing many of the concepts for the first time. And there have been bright spots, from the accountability and attention to detail that Johnson demands to the offense’s execution in the two-minute drill. Still, a fan base that hasn’t celebrated a playoff win since the 2010 season and is looking for its first franchise quarterback in over 80 years doesn’t need much to get on edge.

“They’ve installed a lot — OTAs, now,” Williams said. “I take pride in trying to retain it all, every single detail that we have. I think that’s where I’ve been growing so far since Ben’s been here is retaining all of the information, all of it makes sense to me and being able to go out there and execute.

“Obviously, there’s going to be mistakes, but being able to understand that it was a mistake by me or we lined up wrong — whatever the case may be — getting back in the huddle, calling it right, getting back out there, doing it, executing, being a player-led team [is what’s important].”

Offseason moves have put the onus on Williams to make that second-year jump. He has a revamped offensive line along with a first-round tight end in Colston Loveland and second-round wide receiver in Luther Burden III. Johnson’s offensive innovation is expected to get the most out of Williams.

VIDEO: #Bears QB Caleb Williams throws a temper tantrum after missing four consecutive checkdowns during a throwing net drill. pic.twitter.com/xqnh7NhLqk

— 𝑻𝒚𝒍𝒆𝒓 𝑰𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅 🍀 (@TylerTalksBall) August 2, 2025

“I think as a human being, I want it to happen super fast, and I would love for it to look really clean and for [Williams] to look like a fifth-year vet right now,” Poles said. “But I think, just being in this long enough, what’s reality, though? It’s going to take time. It’s new.

“A new defense is going to jump out faster. It always does. We’re also playing this man scheme that [defensive coordinator] Dennis [Allen] is playing is a pain, and he is not holding back anything. And I think because of that it might look choppy at times, but that’s what you want. You want this time to look, be as hard as possible. And then when you get to game time when the lights come on, you want that to then slow down.”

What are the legitimate reasons for concern and optimism as the Bears get ready to host the Miami Dolphins for a joint practice and their first preseason game on Sunday? Here are a few.

Concern: Is the Bears’ offense too complicated?

Backup quarterback Case Keenum has played for eight teams and numerous playcallers entering his 12th NFL season. He likened Johnson’s scheme to the “greatest hits” of his career — an offense that utilizes heavy play-action, shifts, pre-snap motion and a complex system for calling plays.

“Ben has put a lot of pressure on us as quarterbacks to handle playcalls without wristbands out there,” Keenum said. “New playcalls every day. Long ones with double kills and possible alerts.”

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Johnson said he wants Williams to be “a little bit more structured” when it comes to handling calls, which are often longer and contain more verbiage than he dealt with last season.

“There’s so many words that we have in our playbook, and we put so many words together that sometimes they kind of sound the same,” Williams said. “So when you hear a play or start to hear a play it’s like, ‘OK, I know what the play is’ and I know exactly what we have.”

The complex nature of this offense isn’t limited to the quarterback position. Wide receiver Rome Odunze noted that mastery of the entire scheme might not be realistic early on.

“I know Ben’s offense isn’t just something that you’re going to completely have a full understanding of in Year 1,” Odunze said. “It’s something that takes a little bit of evolving to get there.”

Optimism: The installs are done.

Before practices began on July 23, Johnson went back and evaluated how he installed his offense and structured practices when he first began calling plays as Detroit’s offensive coordinator in 2022.

“It got significantly more complex and layered as we went,” Johnson said. “We’re not starting where [the Lions’] offense started in ’22. We’re more complex.

“I don’t expect them to have it mastered, and yet they’re trusting, they’re really jumping in the deep end here and trusting the fact we’ve got a plan in place. We know what this is gonna look like Week 1. We’re going to get the pieces aligned correctly.”

Johnson has given players a taste of that complexity. During the annual Family Fest practice at Soldier Field, Williams hit tight end Cole Kmet on a 25-yard misdirection touchdown.

The offense is also getting used to accounting for more movement before the snap. Last season, the Lions ranked fifth in pre-snap motion usage (70%), a significant uptick for a Bears offense that used motion 55% of the time (19th) in 2024.

The biggest change for Williams is the amount of work he’s doing under center. As a rookie, Williams took 84 snaps under center and 575 out of the shotgun.

The change has come with coaches altering his footwork and teaching him to keep his eyes on the defense longer. Williams noted the nuances he has learned about the defense identifying formations differently under center than if he were in the shotgun.

“What I have seen from him pre-snap has really progressed into post-snap play being better as well, too,” Keenum said of Williams. “More command of the offense, command of his mechanics, command of the ball placement. Elite ball placement. Great accuracy with some force behind it.”

Concern: Is Williams processing fast enough?

During a practice on July 31, Johnson was calling in a play to Williams via walkie talkie, and it soon became apparent Williams’ headset had malfunctioned. He couldn’t hear his coach.

Again, Williams showed his frustration by motioning to the sideline that he couldn’t hear.

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That provided a teaching moment as Johnson instructed the 23-year-old to have several plays committed to memory to prepare for the likelihood of his headset going out during a game.

“When you get put in that situation for the first time, you start to panic a little bit,” Johnson said. “I don’t know if he experienced that or not, but the message is we don’t panic, we just find solutions, and I think going forward, he’s going to have solutions that he’ll get to right away and we’ll be just fine.

“We don’t want to burn timeouts in that situation.”

There have also been multiple instances of pre-snap errors during the first three weeks of camp. Johnson noted repeated mistakes during the quarterback-center exchange, and three delay-of-game penalties highlighted a practice the coach classified as “sloppy” on Aug. 3.

Receiving the playcall, delivering the information to the huddle and then getting the team to the line of scrimmage early in the play clock has been a goal for Williams to allow himself more time prior to the snap to see what the defense is doing.

“It gives the center, it gives me, it gives the tackle, it gives the wide receiver [a chance] to see the technique of the DB,” Williams said. “It gives the O-lineman [a chance] to see are we going to be able to double-team this ‘backer, are we going to push it, are we going to do this and that.

“It allows me to be able to grasp what they’re about to do.”

Optimism: Williams is improving within offensive structure

During a red zone blitz period on Aug. 2, Williams showed off his best attribute when he evaded the rush and found Kmet for a touchdown in the back corner of the end zone.

Rome down there somewhere pic.twitter.com/GWRPiqwupH

— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) August 6, 2025

“The best thing he does is the unscripted stuff, the two-minute stuff where he’s able to go out and really play and show the competitiveness that makes him who he is,” offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said.

But even Williams knows the key to his success this season is playing better within the structure of the offense, or as he put it, “not being that young cat and wanting to go and get that big play, that big scramble play” too often.

That’s been the focus in team drills, and during Tuesday’s session, Williams ended practice by stepping into a throw and giving Odunze a chance down the left sideline.

The result was a 40-yard touchdown and one of Williams’ longest completions of the summer. It’s moments like that when the former Heisman Trophy winner has shown Bears’ brass that he can go through his progressions and make the right decisions.

“He’s getting better at it,” Poles said. “It’ll start with the simple, obviously as you go and you get older, all of a sudden you can progress from one side of the field to the other — fast. Very similar to when we were in [Kansas City], [Chiefs quarterback] Pat [Mahomes] didn’t know coverages, a lot of the big plays were when he just made things happen.

“And every year you just keep getting better and better at identifying what teams are doing to you, and then all of a sudden there’s looks that they’re hiding from you and then all of a sudden snap goes and then they’re switching into something. Once your Rolodex grows, you can react to those things and actually start to manipulate them as you get older. It’s just part of the quarterback position in the growth process.”