Caleb Williams and Bears didn’t snap losing streak vs. Packers. But did they snap out of their offensive rut?

With two minutes to play, the Chicago Bears trailed by one point.

Caleb Williams had posted his cleanest and most efficient game in weeks — until this drive, when the first overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft absorbed back-to-back sacks.

Now facing third-and-19 from his own 21, Williams knew how urgently his team needed him to make a play. He knew the minor reversion to holding the ball too long the previous two snaps hadn’t defined his day.

So why let it now?

Williams dropped back and scrambled right as his pocket began closing yet again. He evaded the grasp of Packers defensive lineman Kingsley Enagbare, kept his eyes downfield as he ran and then fired down the middle to fellow 2024 first-rounder, Rome Odunze.

Odunze caught the pass but was tackled three yards short of the line to gain.

So the Bears lined up again, Odunze headed toward the right sideline as Williams floated a 21-yard fade into Odunze’s waiting hip pocket.

The Bears had officially flipped the field.

“Just let it rip and let him make plays,” Williams told reporters afterward. “And then on the fade ball, good call by [new offensive coordinator Thomas Brown]. I think they would be expecting a run or getting something near the sticks. And this is a matchup league as everybody tells you. So to be able to have my guy Rome one on one with somebody, win off the line, knowing that the [defensive back’s] in catchup mode? Give him a back-shoulder ball and either he’s going to get a [pass interference] or he’s going to catch it.

“Unbelievable catch.”

As it pertains to the win-loss column, the rookie duo’s heroics were ultimately all for naught. Three players later, Chicago kicker Carlos Santos lined up for a 46-yard field goal attempt that the Packers blocked.

Green Bay won 20-19, its 11th straight victory in the rivalry. But while the Packers were the franchise improving to 7-3 with their latest division win, the Bears didn’t fully downplay their own reasons for optimism at 4-6.

Five days after firing offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and promoting Brown from then-passing game coordinator, Chicago’s offense demonstrated a rhythm and comfort level its players had not shown in weeks.

Williams more fully utilized his skill set, all the while protecting himself on risky plays.

Bears head coach Matt Eberflus, who is coaching to keep his job after this season, understood that. So he shared the wins aloud.

“There [were] a lot of positives to build from and that’s what we have to do,” Eberflus said. “The last three weeks, the offense hadn’t played that well. [Then] today, we did the things necessary to win the game.

“Now, everybody has this feeling inside that you lose a game like this and it’s a bad taste. But there’s also some good things. And we need to use those as fuel going forward. There’s a lot of positive here.”

Beginning with Williams.

From decision-making to dual threat, here’s where Williams showed progress

Across the Bears’ prior three losses, Williams completed 50.5% of passes for 468 yards, no touchdowns and no interceptions. He was sacked on 15.93% of his dropbacks, including nine from a previously “soft” New England Patriots pass rush unit.

He rushed on average five times per game in that stretch, for 22.3 yards per game.

That performance marked a dip from Williams’ earlier stretch. In his first six games, he had completed 65.3% of passes for nine touchdowns, five interceptions and a 9.13% sack clip — still too many hits, but better.

Williams had rushed 4.1 times per game, for 28.2 yards per game, in that early stretch. It was enough to beat less talented teams.

Then came Sunday.

Williams was facing a more successful division rival whose defense is rounding into form this season. Williams received play calls from a different coordinator than his first nine career games.

The play selection, game operation and execution largely worked.

After 25 series without a touchdown, the Bears turned a red-zone interception from their defense into a 13-play, 76-yard drive iced by a seven-yard rushing touchdown from Roschon Johnson in the second quarter.

Chicago entered halftime ahead and scored on each of its next two possessions coming out of the half. Williams found diverse opportunities, from a 25-yard completion to big-bodied tight end Cole Kmet to an eight-yard completion to Johnson on fourth-and-2, when the Bears decided to ride their momentum and stay on the field.

Williams capitalized on run lanes early and often, scrambling for a career-high 70 yards including 60 in the first half alone. That athleticism required the Packers to always worry going forward whether the quarterback would escape. In NFL coaching terms: There was now a numbers mismatch, as Williams needed defending as both passer and runner. Disguising plays accordingly, the Bears schemed a 39-yard rushing touchdown for D’Andre Swift around the left end.

“We got poor with our rush lanes and he was running right up the middle,” Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said of Williams. “Where they hurt us, though, especially in the first half, was his ability to make plays.”

Williams also made plays by air, completing 74.2% of his passes for 231 yards and taking just one sack before the final drive of the game when he took the two.

He distributed the ball across more than half a dozen playmakers, and he distributed it decisively.

After entering the week with a slower release than 24 quarterbacks at 2.9 seconds on average, Williams sped that up to 2.42 seconds vs. the Packers, per Next Gen Stats. That’s faster than any quarterback has averaged this season, the Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa leading qualified passers at 2.44 (quarterbacks have had faster single games).

Previously, Williams’ fastest time to throw was 2.59 seconds against the Houston Texans – in a game in which he threw no touchdowns and two interceptions on 48 dropbacks.

His other releases ranged from 2.71 seconds per game, to 3.30 two weeks ago against the Cardinals.

Eberflus said he saw hints of that progress earlier in the week as Brown took over the offense.

“We could see that on Wednesday, the completion percentage was high,” Eberflus said. “Same thing on Thursday and into Friday. Him getting the ball out of his hands was good. The rhythm and the progressions were great. Those were all evident during the course of the week and then we saw it during the game.”

How rough is Williams’ rookie year – and how much is salvageable?

Williams’ rookie year isn’t the rockiest of recent first overall picks.

He’s already won more games than 2023 top draft pick Bryce Young, whose Panthers went 2-15 last year as Young was shuffled between play-callers (including Brown) and lost his head coach midway through the season.

In 2021, quarterback Trevor Lawrence was hailed as a generational talent … then sent to a Jacksonville Jaguars team more dysfunctional than the franchise’s current iteration that lost 52-6 to the Detroit Lions on Sunday. Head coach Urban Meyer, a problem culturally and schematically that year, was fired after 13 games.

Williams, in comparison, came to a team that had the first overall pick not because they boasted the prior year’s worst record but instead because they made an opportune draft trade with the Panthers, who ultimately had the worst record.

The USC product arrived to one of the deepest receiver rooms in first-overall-pick rookie lore and with a better-than-average defense for picks of his caliber. Chicago’s offensive line has left something to be desired in its cohesiveness. But overall, Williams has tools to succeed that his predecessor Justin Fields did not.

So while a new voice was in the quarterback’s ear Sunday, most of his foundation was consistent. After the game, Williams didn’t lament his coaching instability or his rocky recent weeks or even his kicker missing a field goal the offense had positioned him reasonably to make.

Instead, Williams reinforced belief in his teammates including Santos. He took accountability for drives on which the offense settled for a field goal or a punt, noting how each influenced the need for a game-winning kick in the first place.

And Williams thought back to advice from his college coach, USC’s Lincoln Riley.

The two spoke recently amid the Bears’ struggles and Williams thought back to advice Riley gave his quarterback as an Oklahoma freshman in 2021.

At the time, quarterback Spencer Rattler (a 2024 fifth-round New Orleans Saints draft pick) was still starting. Williams was antsy.

His coach’s message then?

“He told me to keep going,” Williams said. “At that time, I didn’t necessarily know what those two words meant. I wanted more than that. I wanted to hear a little bit more than that, and that’s all he told me.”

But the message stuck as Williams earned the starting job at Oklahoma and then, with Riley, at USC. It stuck as the Bears drafted him first overall in April and named him their starting quarterback weeks later.

Sunday, as Williams and the Bears sustained their fourth straight loss, improvement evident but not enough, Williams leaned on the message once more.

“I use those words to this day,” Williams said. “Once I got the starting spot and I kept working, kept going. That’s all you can do. That’s all we can do. Keep going, keep our head down and find ways to win.

“So we’re going to keep doing that.”