Tag: Caleb Williams

Lions vs Bears: Last-minute thoughts and final score prediction

Lions vs Bears: Last-minute matchup thoughts and final score prediction for the Week 16 game in Chicago

It’s been a few weeks since the Detroit Lions played at 1 p.m. ET on a Sunday. The Lions have played today’s Week 16 opponent, the Chicago Bears, more recently than they last played at the traditional early Sunday kickoff.

As such, this Sunday’s morning pot of coffee is rushed a bit. It’s time to get buzzing about the Lions once again. The 12-2 Lions head west on I-94 to Chicago to play the 4-10 Bears, losers of eight games in a row. It’s time for the first-place Lions to shine through the wintry gloaming and bring smiles back to Detroit after a tough loss to the Bills that added more names to the already-naughty list of injured players.

Here’s what’s on mind in the hours before the game at Soldier Field…

Why I think the Lions will win

Aside from the fact that the Bears have exactly one offensive player (WR D.J. Moore) who would start this week for Detroit, or the additional fact that Bears defensive front has fallen off a cliff since the start of their nine-game losing streak, there are just so many reasons to believe the Lions cruise in Chicago.

The Xs and Os all favor the Lions, every single one of them. That’s still true even with the recent injury ravages to Detroit’s defense. But it’s the Lions offense versus the Bears defense that leaves me bullish on the trip to Chicago.

In the past, which includes the tightly played Thanksgiving matchup, the Bears defense presented quite a few problems for Detroit’s offense. Between their scheme crowding the middle of the field and Chicago’s ability to reliably generate pressure without blitzing, there might not be a better defensive design to slow down QB Jared Goff and OC Ben Johnson’s offense.

That Chicago defense might still have much of the same personnel, but they appear to have been declawed. The Bears have fallen from grace. Over the last six games–which includes the Week 13 meeting–Chicago has managed just nine sacks and a pressure percentage that ranks 28th over that time, per SIS. The stingy early-season defense has allowed 28 per game in the last month and is trending in the wrong way. The run defense, never a strength, continues to surrender almost five yards per carry on first down and 4.7 (27th in the league) overall.

For all of the Lions injuries, the offense is still in pretty good shape. Losing David Montgomery certainly hurts, but the rest of the skill position players are coming off a game where they hung 42 points on a very good Bills team.

The vaunted Lions offensive line hasn’t played to its lofty standards recently. There are two ways to look at that. Either Penei Sewell, Frank Ragnow and friends just aren’t that good anymore, or they’re due for a rebound game where they assert their dominance. I’ll take the latter in this one, with some legitimate disappointed surprise if it doesn’t play out that way.

Detroit’s defense continues the search for healthy bodies, and the latest losses of Alim McNeill and (especially) Carlton Davis are quite problematic. The Lions plan a ton of man coverage in part because Davis, as the team’s top cover man, is very good at it. Caleb Williams, the Bears’ rookie QB, is at his worst when facing man coverage. Their receivers don’t separate easily from man, and Williams’ hesitancy to let it fly exacerbates their issues. Even without Davis and McNeill joining the injured list, I don’t see Williams suddenly becoming much better at any of those things–especially not with a banged-up OL and an interim coach who doesn’t appear to have resonated with the team as they hoped.

What concerns me about the Bears

Last week, ahead of the Lions-Bills game in this spot, I gave a two-word answer here. Josh Allen.

This week, I’ll give another two-word answer for what worries me about the Bears.

Not much.

Okay, that’s a little too dismissive of another professional team, one that the Lions edged by just three points last month. They still have a very good tight end in Cole Kmet, who works very well in tandem with D.J. Moore–a guy who has proven he’s one of the best all-around receivers in the league even if the stats don’t necessarily say so.

Keenan Allen isn’t close to what he used to be in his Chargers prime, but he remains a viable threat in the red zone and on the sidelines. Rookie Rome Odunze is, much like his fellow top-10 rookie at QB, sporadically great but often not quite there yet. Old friend D’Andre Swift is a legit receiving threat out of the backfield, something that Josh Allen and the Bills destroyed Detroit’s defense with a week ago.

Williams, of course, is the key to it all. While stylistically quite different, his rookie campaign has a few similarities to one Matthew Stafford in Detroit back in 2009. Remember those days, Lions fans? We loved the flashes of brilliance and the glimpses of the emerging standout, but there were also those weird empty drives that strung together a little too easily in just about every game. The sharpness of the eyes and the relative inexperience against the speedier schemes and defenses of the NFL gave young Stafford a lot of trouble. They do against Williams, too. But if, by chance, Williams can keep his composure for four quarters, the Bears offense can definitely do some damage against Detroit the way Stafford could take over a game or two as a rookie.

Chicago’s defense still fares well at creating takeaways. They do still gum up the 5-to-10-yard passes over the middle as well as anyone, and that’s still where Jared Goff is at his best in targeting. The Bears are still capable on third down defense (10th) and red zone TD percentage (3rd). They should have some semblance of confidence after playing very effective defense in the second half on Thanksgiving, too. If ever there was a team with a death-gasp stunner of a game, this is the time and place for it for Chicago.

Final score prediction

I’m going to hedge this one, because there are two distinct ways I see the Lions and Bears playing out.

A) The Lions come out flat in the cold, struggle with a defensive miscommunication or two, and fall behind at the half. Then Dan Campbell roars life into his team at halftime and Detroit prevails 27-22.

B) Detroit replicates the first half success from the Thanksgiving meeting, but this time the Bears are more resigned to their losing fate and the Lions cruise 33-12.

Either way, the Lions should improve to 13-2.

Sam Darnold finally found the good NFL situation Caleb Williams currently lacks

Sam Darnold finally has a competent coach and organization. Caleb Williams? Not yet. That’s the difference between the two.

When former USC quarterbacks Sam Darnold and Caleb Williams faced off last month, they produced an overtime classic. This time, it was not nearly as exciting. On Monday night, Williams and the Chicago Bears traveled to take on Darnold and the Minnesota Vikings in a nationally televised matchup. Minnesota entered the game having won six in a row, while Chicago had lost seven straight.

It became apparent early on that both trends would continue. The Vikings jumped out to a 10-0 first quarter lead and never looked back, cruising to a 30-12 win.

Once again, Darnold was the better of the two QBs, although not by a significant margin. He completed 24 of 40 passes for 231 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. Williams, meanwhile, completed 18 of 31 passes for 191 yards and a touchdown.

The Vikings have officially clinched a playoff spot. They are currently tied with the Detroit Lions for first place in the NFC North.

The Bears, meanwhile, are eliminated from playoff contention. They are currently in the market for a new coach, and hope to hire someone who will be able to develop and get the most out of Williams as he enters his second NFL season.

The difference between Sam Darnold and Caleb Williams boils down to the quality of an organization and its coach. Minnesota has a sound organization led by Kevin O’Connell, one of the best coaches in the league. The Bears were headless horsemen this season, and general manager Ryan Poles did not give Caleb a remotely competent offensive line. It’s amazing what can happen for Darnold when he’s not saddled by the Jets’ or Panthers’ futility. Caleb Williams needs that same taste of freedom in Chicago with a coach who knows what he’s doing.

Lions pass rush vs. Bears pass protection: Something’s got to give

Something’s got to give in battle between Detroit’s injury-ravaged D and Chicago’s bad blocking and Caleb Williams’ terrible sack rate

The Chicago Bears have a very real problem with pass protection. The Detroit Lions, thanks to injuries, have a problem rushing the passer of late.

Something’s got to give when the two square off in Soldier Field on Sunday.

Detroit’s pass rush has fallen off since the team lost starters Marcus Davenport, Derrick Barnes and (especially) Aidan Hutchinson in a four-week period. The Lions rank 26th in sack percentage and 23rd in QB pressure rate, but those figures fall to 27th in sack rate and 30th in pressure rate since Hutchinson was lost.

Now the Lions roll into Chicago without their top remaining rusher, DT Alim McNeill. It’s hard to quantify just how much that will impact the Lions pass rush, but consider he’s been responsible for almost exactly 20 percent of the team’s QB pressures over the last five weeks. Needless to say, it’s not a good development.

If ever there was a fortuitous time for the dilapidated Lions defense to make a statement, it’s facing the Chicago Bears. Losers of eight games in a row, their inability to protect rookie QB Caleb Williams, as well as Williams’ own inability to protect himself, has been one of the big reasons for the losses.

No current starting quarterback gets sacked more frequently than Williams, who averages going down on every ninth dropback. Over the last four weeks, which includes the first meeting between the two NFC North rivals, Williams has been both sacked and pressured more frequently than any other quarterback. Chicago allows a sack rate over 12 percent in that timeframe, despite ranking in the middle of the pack (18th) in pressure allowed rate.

From NFL Inside Edge, the sack rate for starting QBs:

In the Thanksgiving meeting in Detroit, the Lions sacked Williams five times and recorded 16 QB hurries (per PFF) on 44 dropbacks by the Bears offense. In the two games since, the Lions have recorded one sack and the 21st-ranked pressure rate in the league. And that was with McNeill!

The Bears pass protection gave and the Lions defense took in that last meeting. If Detroit can win that battle of give/take on Sunday, it will go a long way toward helping the Lions to get back on the winning path.

Caleb Williams’ dad was right about the Chicago Bears all along

Caleb Williams really should’ve listened to his dad’s warning.

One thing is abundantly clear at this stage in the Chicago Bears’ miserable 4-10 season, where they’ve lost eight games in a row.

A despondent Caleb Williams should’ve listened to his dad’s prescient candor.

In case you forget what Carl Williams once told GQ, he viewed the NFL Draft process as a flawed, broken model of what it really should be. With his talented son projected as a future top draft pick, Williams characterized the whole draft model as “completely backward.” Why? It sets up talented players like Caleb Williams to fail by throwing them into impossible situations on some of the NFL’s most dysfunctional teams.

Furthermore, it was suggested that Carl might have had his son pull an “Eli Manning” — meaning, refuse to go to a specific team in the draft — rather than risk ruining his pro football future with an incompetent organization that would NOT do everything to maximize his gifts.

The Williams family did none of that. In fact, Caleb went as far as to directly quell concerns about him not wanting to go to Chicago. He wanted all the smoke as the player who would finally break the Bears’ miserable cycle of torturing doe-eyed quarterbacks.

Ironic, isn’t it? As Williams increasingly looks more and more defeated, with his confidence getting shattered by the week, both the senior and junior Williams are reaping what they sowed:

Carl Williams was right. The NFL Draft process does not skew toward putting talented young football prospects in a position to succeed. If anything, especially with quarterbacks, it asks them to fight an uphill battle at a time when they’re supposed to be learning good habits. With the respective resurgences of Baker Mayfield, Geno Smith, and Sam Darnold on new teams, we have more evidence than ever that amateurish organizations break raw quarterbacks most of the time.

It’s not the other way around.

There’s still plenty of time for Caleb Williams to achieve everything he wanted as the Bears quarterback. He may well become a superstar franchise player that has Chicago in perennial championship contention. No one is writing it off this early in his career. (That is, until we see the next Bears head coach.)

But the Bears themselves have lost the benefit of the doubt on this front. Just like every other quarterback who has walked into their building over the last four decades, there is little to suggest they’re not going to screw up Williams, too. Until further notice, the burden of proof is on them to simply suggest they won’t. Suffice it to say, the Williams family could’ve avoided all of this mess by turning his draft process into more of a public circus as they eventually spurned the Bears.

The short-term pain and drama would’ve been worth the long-term benefit: avoiding an inept organization that has no earthly idea about how to develop quarterbacks and, at this point, probably never will.

Bears fall to Vikings, have more losses than rest of NFC North combined

The struggles continue for Caleb Williams and the Bears

The NFC North has three powerhouse teams. It also has the Chicago Bears.

The Minnesota Vikings downed the Bears, 30-12, on Monday night in a total mismatch.

The loss dropped Chicago to 4-10. Doing some basic math, the Detroit Lions have two losses, the Green Bay Packers have four and the Vikings have two.

That adds up to a total of eight defeats for those three teams. Yes, the Chicago Bears have more losses through Week 15 than the entire rest of the division combined.

The Bears’ eight-game losing streak equals the amount of losses the other three NFC North teams have.

Caleb Williams was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL draft. The QB from USC has been through multiple head coaches and offensive coordinators as a rookie.

It took them almost 55 minutes of playing time to score a touchdown against the Vikings. They did so on a Williams touchdown pass to Keenan Allen.

It was far too little, far too late. Like the entire season.

A battered Caleb Williams on the sideline perfectly summed up the latest Bears’ disaster

Pain? Exhaustion? No, friends, this is merely the realization you’re quarterback of the Chicago Bears.

The Chicago Bears fired embattled head coach Matt Eberflus after Week 13. Somewhere, one finger on a severed monkey’s paw slowly curled.

Chicago’s decision to promote interim offensive coordinator Thomas Brown to the top job made sense. After all, his playbook of quick-release passes and directive to run at the first sign of pressure had unlocked some of rookie quarterback Caleb Williams’s best football this fall.

This did not pan out on the field. The Bears gained five yards of total offense in the first half of Brown’s Week 14 debut against the San Francisco 49ers. With a chance to throw a wrench in NFC North rival Minnesota’s chances to win a division title, Chicago’s offense once again shrank.

There, on the bench after absorbing a brutal hit from the Vikings’ relentless pass rush after a second red zone drive thoroughly botched by stupid penalties, Williams found a way to sum up the Bears’ 2024 without a single word.

That is the face of a man who is battered and exhausted. He’s stuck behind an offensive line that allowed him so little time to throw only one of his first half passes traveled more than five yards beyond the line of scrimmage. His offense ran 10 plays inside the Minnesota 21-yard line and committed stupid, drive-stalling penalties on four of them.

The rookie was tossed into the same centrifuge that separated Justin Fields from his potential and is subject to the same pain a litany of once-vaunted quarterbacks have felt before him. Today is December 16, 2024. It is the day Caleb Williams truly became a Chicago Bear.

The Bears forced Caleb Williams to contemplate losing for the first time in his career

The Bears are a vortex of misery and despair.

As a high school football player in the Washington, D.C., area, Caleb Williams took his team to a championship. While in college with USC, Williams never quite took the Trojans to such lofty heights, but he did win 23 of 33 career games while also taking home the 2022 Heisman Trophy.

The Bears are a different story. The Bears, led by overmatched general manager Ryan Poles, are a poorly-oiled machine that only produces pain and angst. The Bears — and their rampant losing in the most preventable ways — are something that Williams apparently wasn’t prepared for.

You gotta feel for the kid for clearly having more hope coming into the league.

Alas, the Bears will do that to you.

On Thursday, Williams expressed unique candor about what it’s been like to suffer through the Bears’ current seven-game losing streak. They have not won a game since mid-October. Taking it a step further, they haven’t won stateside since early October.

All of this is uncharted territory for Williams. Even he couldn’t have seen the Bears’ penchant for futility coming:

To Williams’ credit, he does show a lot of maturity here.

Characterizing this whole lost Bears season as a worthy learning experience for someone who expects to be a great quarterback in the NFL one day is exactly what you want to hear. It’s the cookie-cutter explanation, but it’s the right one. You hope Williams can grow from this challenging situation and learn how to channel this mess into sustained success.

Still, by that same token, if Williams is showing this much public honesty about the Bears’ failures, he’s also showing cracks in his armor. It doesn’t seem like he understood just how deep the Bears’ frustrations really went before they made him a No. 1 overall draft pick. That’s quite troubling, to say the least.

Let me help him out.

The Bears have had one winning season since current chairman George McCaskey took the team over in 2011. Including 2024, they have finished in last place in the NFC North six times in that same span. When we expand this purview, the Bears have just six postseason appearances and only three playoff wins this century.

Put another way: the Bears have a well-worn reputation as an NFC cellar dweller.

Maybe Williams will be the player to change that. He definitely has the requisite game-changing ability to transform an afterthought into a marquee NFL franchise. But for now, all of the Bears’ failures sure seem like a shock to his system.

For a quarterback as talented as he is, I don’t blame him.

Bears GM Ryan Poles is reportedly unhappy over his unofficial demotion which is so ironic

Ryan Poles doesn’t understand the Bears’ new power structure because he’s being a whiny child.

I want to make one thing clear before I say anything else.

In no way, shape, or form am I defending the current iteration of the Chicago Bears led by overmatched and overwhelmed George Halas scion, George McCaskey. In 14 years as Chicago’s chairman, McCaskey has ruined the reputation of the NFL’s charter franchise by overseeing the worst era in team history. Three of the five worst Bears coaches ever by winning percentage were hired under his guidance. In effect, McCaskey has demonstrated his milquetoast leadership is pathetic at worst and inept at best.

No organization led by this clear product of nepotism deserves the benefit of the doubt.

With that said, it’s quite amusing to hear that Bears general manager Ryan Poles is reportedly unhappy with Chicago’s new power structure. It’s as if he doesn’t understand the job he took in the first place. That, or he thinks he doesn’t deserve accountability.

According to Waddle and Silvy of ESPN1000 in Chicago, Poles doesn’t like that he now has to report to team president Kevin Warren. It’s “not a personal thing,” either. It’s that Poles apparently doesn’t like not reporting to McCaskey anymore, as he did in the 2.5 years before the Bears fired Poles’ hand-picked doofus coach, Matt Eberflus.

My guy. C’mon. Can we please have a modicum of self-awareness?

Let’s set aside the fact that the Bears have operated like this for years. Let’s ignore that they have usually emasculated their general manager while empowering a glorified accountant (I haven’t forgotten you, Ted Phillips!) who has no precedent of success at the professional level of football. Let’s also not forget that Poles was hired before Warren and even served on the 2023 search committee that brought Warren to the organization. They broke their own mold to let Poles have the reins to himself for once.

So, I don’t think Poles reporting to Warren now is all that outlandish. That’s because, for as much as I wouldn’t trust Warren to bring the Bears back to prominence, I trust Poles even less. I’m not sure I would trust Poles to dial the water temperature in a shower, much less build a Super Bowl-caliber team.

At the time of this writing, Poles’ Bears have a meager 14 wins in three seasons. They have never been relevant past Thanksgiving. After bungling the short-lived Justin Fields era, Chicago is now in serious danger of ruining an even better quarterback prospect in Caleb Williams — one of the biggest pillars of hope this franchise has seen in decades.

The Bears’ trademark incompetence aside, most of that lies at the feet of Poles.

Poles is the one who has made perplexing decisions in free agency time and time again. For example, he gave underwhelming linebacker Tremaine Edmunds just $3.2 million less guaranteed than perennial First-Team All-Pro Roquan Smith, who he traded to the Baltimore Ravens. Somewhere, San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle is still running past Edmunds in coverage.

Despite stockpiling salary cap room and assets he has yet to use in a productive fashion, Poles is the one who weirdly mortgaged part of the Bears’ future with an ill-advised, expensive trade for workout warrior receiver Chase Claypool. Surely, it’ll shock you to learn Claypool finished his Bears career with just 18 catches for 191 yards.

Poles is the one who once emphasized the importance of addressing the Bears’ trenches. We’re almost three years into his tenure, and the Bears still have zero building blocks on the offensive interior, even though they have the best quarterback talent they’ve ever had playing for them. The Bears are on pace to allow over 60 sacks this season. Good stuff!

To give Williams a red carpet for his early NFL career, Poles also helped empower ex-offensive coordinator Shane Waldron. The Bears’ offense has basically had no consistent rhythm for three months. It’s only looked occasionally good when Williams has played off-schedule because Waldron installed nothing coherent or sustainable. Now unemployed, Waldron will sooner get a job off LinkedIn before he’s entrusted to run another team’s offense again.

And don’t get me started on Poles’ drafting history. He has arguably left the cupboard more bare than any of his recent predecessors. The Bears are just as far away from competitive relevance now as when Poles took the job in 2022.

Gee, I wonder why Poles’ bosses moved around the chairs on the deck of their personal Titanic.

So forgive me if I want to play a tiny violin for one of the NFL’s worst general managers. He gets no sympathy from me. If Poles really is upset that he has to report to someone else now, he doesn’t understand how badly he executed his own convoluted rebuild plan. He has not earned the right to complain.

Frankly, he’s lucky he still has his job.

Commanders-Falcons is one of 5 candidates for Saturday flex in Week 17

Washington’s Week 17 game vs. Atlanta could be moved to Saturday.

Could a Week 17 showdown between Jayden Daniels and the Washington Commanders against Kirk Cousins and the Atlanta Falcons be moved to prime time?

Week 17—Christmas week—has NFL games on four different days: Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, and Monday. However, that’s the current schedule, as the league can flex multiple games to Saturday. The Commanders’ game against the Falcons is one of five games under consideration.

Washington has had two prime-time games this season: Week 3 against the Bengals on Monday Night Football and Week 11 against the Eagles on Thursday Night Football. Both games were on the road, with Washington going 1-1.

The NFL wanted to flex the Commanders’ Week 6 game against the Ravens to Sunday Night Football, but CBS blocked the move. That week’s Sunday night contest was the Bengals and Giants. Several around the NFL weren’t happy with CBS.

The Commanders did have one of their games flexed this season. In the Week 8 meeting with the Chicago Bears, the No. 1 overall pick (Caleb Williams) faced the No. 2 overall pick (Daniels), and the game was moved from 1 p.m. ET to the late afternoon 4:25 p.m. kickoff.

Here are the five games under consideration to be flexed in Week 17:

  • Atlanta Falcons at Washington Commanders
  • Arizona Cardinals at Los Angeles Rams
  • Denver Broncos at Cincinnati Bengals
  • Indianapolis Colts at New York Giants
  • Los Angeles Chargers at New England Patriots

The NFL has a tripleheader scheduled for Saturday, with three games on that day. Of the above games, Washington-Atlanta seems to have the most playoff implications. The Commanders hold the No. 7 seed in the NFC playoff picture, while the Falcons are one game behind the Buccaneers in the NFC South.

The Cardinals-Rams is also a meeting with playoff implications for both teams, as they are locked in a battle with the Seahawks and 49ers to win the NFC West. The Chargers, Broncos and Colts are all in the playoff mix, while the Bengals are on the outside looking in. The Giants and Patriots are two of the NFL’s worst teams.

As it stands now, it looks like the Commanders and Falcons will meet on Saturday.

Where does Commanders’ Kliff Kingsbury rank among 2025 head coaching candidates?

Where does Commanders OC Kliff Kingsbury rank among 2025 coaching candidates?

There was no hotter assistant coach in the NFL through the first half of this season than Washington Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury. Kingsbury helped rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels take the NFL by storm, while Washington’s offense looked unbeatable.

That immediately led to questions about whether Kingsbury would return to Washington in 2025 or receive a second chance to become an NFL head coach. Kingsbury was Arizona’s head coach from 2019 to 22 but was fired after finishing with a 28-37-1 record.

Unfortunately for Washington, the offense struggled at times during a three-game losing streak. This immediately led to talk about the “Kliff Cliff.” The “Kliff Cliff” is supposedly where Kingsbury’s offenses struggle during the second half of the season. However, the research fails to provide proper context for these struggles, such as poor defensive play, college scheduling, and injuries. 

Kingsbury and head coach Dan Quinn dismissed the notion. Former NFL MVP Matt Ryan was adamant that the so-called “Kliff Cliff” was not real. 

So, despite Washington’s recent struggles — the Commanders did get back on track with almost 500 yards of offense in a 42-19 win over Tennessee last week — is Kingsbury still a viable head coaching candidate in 2025?

Dan Graziano of ESPN recently ranked the top 10 coaching candidates for the 2025 carousel. Graziano ranked Kingsbury No. 9. Ben Johnson, Mike Vrabel and Bill Belichick topped the list.

The Bears have an opening. Kingsbury has a good relationship with their rookie quarterback, Caleb Williams. Could Chicago target Kingsbury as Matt Eberflus’ replacement? Don’t bet on it. There’s no way the Bears will allow Williams, who has struggled this season, to pick the next head coach. Also, Chicago interviewed Kingsbury to be the offensive coordinator last offseason and went with Shane Waldron, who was fired weeks ago.

So, yes, Kingsbury is a head coaching candidate, but it’s hard to see a more perfect match than Chicago, and that seems unlikely.

Also, what if Kingsbury wants to stay in Washington for a while and continue working with Daniels? That could help bolster his candidacy in future seasons.

It remains to be seen how many coaching vacancies there will be in 2025. The more that open, the better Kingsbury’s chances. As of now, he doesn’t appear to be at the top of anyone’s list. But remember, it only takes one team.