One of the toughest challenges for every team drafting a young quarterback is getting them up to speed on whatever offensive scheme they’re playing in. NFL offenses are complex beasts. Jay Cutler once said it takes three years before players truly master a system. Executing at a high level in the first year is challenging even for a veteran, so rookies face a far steeper learning curve. College offenses aren’t close to the NFL’s depth and complexity. That is the situation the Chicago Bears faced with Caleb Williams.
If they planned to make him the starter from day one, they would have to do everything in their power to ensure he had a solid grasp of the system. Luckily, they had no big advantage from the start: the #1 pick. That meant the Bears knew who they were taking from the beginning. According to Albert Breer of the MMQB, the team knew Williams was their guy around the beginning of March. That meant they could employ a creative tactic to give Williams a head start on learning the offense.
That facilitated, yes, the more-timely shopping of Fields. It also gave the Bears the opportunity to start subtly onboarding Williams. As such, the team used the three one-hour Zooms it was allowed to do with the quarterback before the draft to get him ready to run the offense, rather than deploying them as a tool to assess him, like you would with other prospects.
During the first one, the Bears taught Williams the terminology, giving him a foundation on what to call formations and motions within new OC Shane Waldron’s scheme. During the second, they started installing their base, normal-down plays. During the third, they put in red zone and third-down plays.
“We wanted to have our install set for the OTAs, and for rookie minicamp, and we wanted to make sure he had those down during those three Zoom meetings,” coach Matt Eberflus told me Friday. “So when he came into rookie minicamp [on May 9], he was very familiar with those installs. We were very fortunate to do that, and Shane and the offensive staff have done a wonderful job of really making it friendly and learnable for Caleb.”
There is a strong possibility other teams might not have recognized such an opportunity and waited until the quarterback was officially selected before starting the process. The Bears were proactive. They took an unconventional route to preparing Williams for his arrival, all without breaking the NFL rules. It is refreshing to see a regime have such logical thinking after many years of seeing previous ones bungle through the process. Williams should now be more than ready once training camp arrives in late July.
Rookies always have their struggles. It is a fact of life in the NFL. Still, nobody can say the Bears aren’t doing everything in their power to make Caleb Williams’ transition as smooth as possible. They’ve surrounded him with a litany of weapons. His offensive coordinator is renowned for his ability to communicate with quarterbacks. They even found ways to feed him the offense ahead of schedule. If he doesn’t find success right away, it won’t be because of anything they did.
