Bears putting QB Caleb Williams under center has been a snap
When the Bears hired head coach Ben Johnson, he promised to make quarterback Caleb Williams uncomfortable, starting with the snap of each play.
Johnson puts his quarterback under center, something Williams didn’t do often in high school, college or his first year with the Bears. Only 13 teams ran more plays out of the shotgun than the Bears did last season. Johnson’s Lions, though, ran the fewest.
After the Bears’ offseason program ended, Williams was given a series of homework assignments before training camp began. One of them was to make sure his footwork was precise once he took the snap from under center.
So far, so good.
“For some guys, it just feels like a fish out of water,” Johnson said before Thursday’s training camp practice. “But I have not felt that from him, even in the springtime. And I know over the course of the summer, he worked it a lot whether it’s a dropback, whether it’s play-action …
“I don’t think about it a whole lot right now in terms of calling plays.”
Neither does Williams.
“There hasn’t really been a challenge for me under center,” Williams said. “I know that that’s been a big thing. But there really hasn’t been a challenge.”
If there’s been a challenge during training camp, it’s been where Williams’ eyes go after the play fake. He doesn't have much game experience turning his back to the line of scrimmage and then having to reorient himself. That will come with additional reps, the Bears hope.
Williams’ footwork getting to that point, though, has been solid. Fumbled snaps, Johnson said, have been attributable to everything from hot days to the center’s timing being not quite right.
“It’s just been gaining the knowledge — the footwork, where we need to be,” Williams said. “The landmarks for the running backs, the landmark for me when I set up or when I’m rolling out, anything like that. It’s just been practicing the technique.”
Johnson was disappointed in Wednesday’s practice, saying the Bears weren’t precise enough in the red zone.
“I didn’t do a good enough job installing those plays for them to come out and look the way that they looked offensively,” he said.
Thursday, though, was better. Williams was sharp for most of practice, which was the longest of camp and meant as a way for the Bears to determine who was “king of the mountain,” Johnson said. Practice ended with a whimper, though, when Williams ended a two-minute drill with a desperation interception that landed in the arms of cornerback Tyrique Stevenson.
Playing under center is essential to Johnson’s play-calling style, which leans heavily on run fakes and trying to create mismatches in a two tight end set. Johnson’s Lions led the league in play-action passes the last two years. He believes that defenses are more likely to fall for run fakes and be caught off-guard by the offense’s timing when the quarterback takes the snap from under center and turns his back to the line of scrimmage.
“What I like about it, you get hard sell actions, [line]backers biting, safeties’ eyes get crisscrossed with different motions and things like that,” Williams said. “The defense actually identifies it differently from when you’re in the ‘gun back [with the running back] offset. It’s a bunch of small minute things that end up mattering and you end up having guys running free or you end up having great leverage on the safety. It’s helpful.
“It’s going to be a part of us for a long time.”