ORCHARD PARK, New York — Three hours before kickoff, Caleb Williams went over to the bench on the Chicago Bears‘ sideline and sat down with his phone in his hand and his headphones on his head.
At times, Williams would rest his head on the back of the white bench, taking in a quite moment for himself inside the empty stadium before his first NFL start in the preseason. He stayed on the bench for 37 minutes and didn’t talk to anyone. Then he exited the field.
When he returned, both Bills and Bears fans were in the stands. People chanted his name as he ran through the tunnel with headphones on his head. It was getting close for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft to make his much-anticipated debut.
The wait for Bears fans, which started when Williams was drafted first overall on April 25 (and honestly even before that), came to an end when the Bears offense took the field to start the game. Williams led the first-team offense down the field on an eight-play, 58-drive that ended in a field goal.
On a third-and-12, Williams stayed in the pocket and fired a pass to DJ Moore for a gain of 12 yards to convert the chains. The next play Williams stood in the pocket despite bodies flying around him. Then as a Bills defender was closing in, Williams delivered a no-look pass to D’Andre Swift that resulted in a 42-yard gain on a screen pass.
“He did a hell of job of avoiding the pressure and making something happen,” Swift said
The veteran running back also went on to say that he should’ve scored on the play, but he did mention that Williams did his job on that screen pass.
The next offensive drive also ended in a field goal. Williams connected with Moore for a 15-yard gain on a designed rollout pass. Two plays later, on another designed rollout, Williams rolled to his right and had pressure in his face. He pump faked and rifled a pass into the wind to Cole Kmet for a 26-yard gain near the right sideline. Three plays after the explosive play to Kmet, Williams ran for a 13-yard gain on third-and-9.
“Yeah, I just know he is going to make a play for sure,” Darnell Wright said. “I just try to do my job, keep him clean and then he will go and make a play.”
Williams played 18 total snaps in two drives. The 22-year-old quarterback finished 4-of-7 for 95 yards and had one rushing attempt for 13 yards.
“I felt good,” Williams said. “There’s always a little bit of a more focus that you have going into games for whatever reason, even if you try and enter that mindset and things like that throughout the week. It’s just a sense of control, I guess, a sense of progress, a sense of a bunch of different things that when you get into games the comfort level and all of that normally skyrockets.”
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Moore felt that comfort level from his rookie quarterback while the two were in the game for the first two series.
“He did good,” Moore said. “The first two drives they were amazing. He went out there with a bunch of confidence. He did good.”
In his first game action, Williams showed patience in the pocket. Accuracy when throwing on the run. The ability to improvise and throw from different arm angles to complete passes. And an understanding of when to use his legs to exploit the defense. The operation also went smoothly.
“I think he was good,” Wright said. “It felt normal. It didn’t feel like anything different, crazy. It felt good.”
A lot of positives to build off, but it wasn’t perfect, as expected. On the second play of the first drive, Darnell Wright was called for a holding penalty, and Williams was forced to throw the ball away, but he did it late and took an unnecessary hit. He was also nearly picked off on a third-and-6 pass that was intended for Rome Odunze on an out route. The Bills were called for an illegal contact penalty on the play. Also, the Bears were forced to settle for two field goals on those first two drives instead of touchdowns.
But for Williams, who last played in a game on Nov. 18, the 33-6 victory over the Bills was not only a positive start for his NFL preseason debut but one that creates excitement moving forward.
“Now we’ve gotta learn from this and get better,” Bears coach Matt Eberflus said.
“What we did well is very good and what we need to improve on. I told the team in the locker room that we’ve gotta level up. I challenged them last week to be able to get better as a whole group, individually and collectively, and they did that, and we’ve got to do it again, because we don’t have time not to improve. So there has to be a sense of urgency in our building.”
