Bears set lofty goal of 70 percent completion rate for Caleb Williams

Ariana Pensy · Correspondent · 7 hours ago

CHICAGO - One of the reasons the Bears brought in head coach Ben Johnson and offensive coordinator Declan Doyle is for their ability to work with young quarterbacks. They have lofty goals for the offense, including for quarterback Caleb Williams to complete 70 percent of his passes this season.

Doyle said it will be key for Williams to complete his reads in a timely manner for him to achieve this goal.

“I think the biggest thing is pass game efficiency is about taking what’s there and obviously just working through his reads,” Doyle said. “The biggest thing on every given play, he’s got a place to start and he’s going to have outlets and answers that he needs to find later in the play and that’s really how that number goes up is when guys are playing through one and two and they’re able to find three and four, find the back, whatever that may be. But really, that’s kind of the goal is it’s process-related. It’s talking him through each of these plates and where the ball might need to go if the primary isn’t open.”

There were a lot of challenges in Williams’ rookie season. However, with this coaching staff and all the talented receivers around him, including receivers DJ Moore, Rome Odunze, and Luther Burden III, as well as tight ends Cole Kmet and Colston Loveland, he has everything he needs to succeed this year.

Furthermore, Doyle said Williams has improved at processing pre-snap and post-snap information.

“Just his processing ability, his thoughts as far as pre-snap and then post-snap, just really engraining how we want him to think. That’s the number one thing,” Doyle said. “He’s gotten better since we got here in February and the progress he’s made until now and he’s still continuing to get better everyday and I think that as we get into these game plans, you’re just going to continue to see a guy who is working really hard at it continue to progress.”

It was a little surprising when Chicago opted to draft Loveland with the No. 10 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, given that they already had a solid tight end in Kmet. But Johnson’s offensive scheme typically relies on two tight ends, making the addition of Loveland important for Johnson’s offense to be properly executed. Nonetheless, there is always a lot of risk when putting that much pressure on a rookie.

Doyle said Loveland has been doing everything that has been asked of him and is eager to learn everything so he can play the way Chicago needs him to.

“First and foremost is he came in very serious about learning the scheme, learning the ins and outs of everything. He’s an eager guy … He just wants more information. He absorbs all of it,” Doyle said. “That’s the biggest thing is he’s done a really good job of learning it. He’s trying to do it exactly the way we’re asking him to do it and then obviously the skill set. Why he’s here is we really enjoyed watching it in college and we’ve seen a lot of the same things here.”

Chicago’s offense faces a significant challenge in the first game, as they take on the Minnesota Vikings on Monday Night Football this coming Monday (7:15 p.m. / ABC). The Vikings are notorious for frequently blitzing, far more than any other team last year.

It will be a good test to see if this offense can genuinely live up to all of the hype.