Has Caleb Williams finally broken the Bears’ 75-year quarterback curse? | Doug Farrar

OOn the flight from Chicago to London for Sunday’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Bears quarterback Caleb Williams harbored the hopes of an entire fan base — not to mention the burden of a 75-year-old quarterback curse unparalleled in the history of professional football.

Apparently Williams left luggage on the plane. In a 35-16 dominance of the Jaguars, the first overall pick in the 2024 draft completed 23 of 29 passes for 226 yardsfour touchdowns, one interception, a passer rating of 124.4, a Completion Rate Over Expected of +12.5% ​​(only Lamar Jackson was better on Sunday at +14.1%) and a Passing EPA of +14.6 (behind only Jared Goff and Jordan Love).

Not bad for a rookie starting his sixth NFL game with a franchise that has systematically destroyed quarterbacks. The last time the Bears had a legitimate franchise quarterback was right after World War II Sid Luckman was wrapping up his Hall of Fame career. Since then, it has been a history of near misses, ‘might-have-beens’ and enormous criticism of the most important position in football – perhaps the most consequential position in any sport.

This is the franchise that lost a coin for the fourth overall pick in the 1944 draft with the Detroit Lions, who used that pick on Otto Graham, who never played for the Lions but succeeded at the Hall of Fame level with the Cleveland Browns . There was more: the third overall pick in the 1948 draft, Bobby Layne, was quickly traded to the Bears. But Layne declined to return to the team after a year playing behind Luckman and Johnny Lujack. Layne later became a Hall of Fame quarterback with the Lions and Pittsburgh Steelers. The Bears also selected George Blanda in the 12th round of the 1949 draft, but owner and head coach George Halas insisted Blanda was more of a kicker than a quarterback. Blanda responded by defecting to the American Football League after a year of retirement in 1960, and yes, putting together his own Hall of Fame career there.

And in 1979, Bears scout Bill Tobin had a first-round pick on a certain Notre Dame star, but general manager Jim Finks was happy with mediocre quarterback Bob Avellini. Notre Dame’s quarterback? Joe Montana.

Since the inception of the AFL-NFL common draft in 1967, the Bears have made first-round picks on seven quarterbacks: Jim McMahon in 1982, Jim Harbaugh in 1987, Cade McNown in 1999, Rex Grossman in 2003, Mitch Trubisky in 2017, Justin Fields in 2021 and Williams in 2024.

None of those first six picks really worked out, except for McMahon, who was more of a punky accessory for the Chicago teams of the mid-1980s, who had some of the best defenses professional football has ever seen.

It takes you through time since your inception as one of the NFL’s original teams in 1920, without a quarterback throwing for 4,000 yards or 30 touchdowns in a single season. Considering the progress made in the passing game, that’s an astonishing drought. And a curse brought on by the franchise itself.

Through the first four weeks of Williams’ NFL career, it seemed like the curse might actually be a thing. Williams completed just 87 of 141 passes (61.7%) for 786 yards (5.6 yards per attempt), three touchdowns, four interceptions, a passer rating of 72.0 (second-worst in the league among qualifying quarterbacks) and 16 sacks behind a leaky offensive line.

But over the past two games, against the Carolina Panthers and the Jacksonville Jaguars (admittedly, two bad defenses), the light has come on. During those games, Williams completed 43 of 58 passes (74.1%) for 530 yards (9.1 yards per attempt), six touchdowns, one interception and a league-leading passer rating of 129.2.

When assessing a quarterback’s progress, whether he’s against good defenses or not, you’re looking for the universal qualities that go along with great play at that position. And especially against the Jaguars in London, Williams proved to have those universal qualities in an intercontinental sense.

Two of Williams’ four touchdown passes against the Jaguars went to veteran receiver Keenan Allen, and the others went to Cole Kmet, who also served on Chicago’s team. emergency long-snapper in play. The first TD pass for Kmet came from a nifty design. Allen went into a lane move, and Williams’ double-fake flat route passes put the Jacksonville defense on edge enough for Kmet to get wide open in the middle of the field.

Kmet’s second touchdown was made possible by Williams watching the safety at the back of the end zone toward an area the quarterback wanted the safety to go to. There are experienced quarterbacks who don’t know how to do this.

The first touchdown pass to Allen was a dart into a tight window in which Williams put the ball on Allen’s right shoulder – where only Allen could catch it. Now Williams showed veteran command.

Williams’ second touchdown against Allen early in the fourth quarter was perhaps the best throw of the quarterback’s young career. He had to send the ball over the outstretched hands of two Jacksonville defenders and the cornerback who was tightly covering Allen, and into a small window before Allen went out of bounds. It was no problem.

Williams also ran four times for 56 yards, but these weren’t random attempts by an overwhelmed rookie; like everything else, there was a clear plan in place.

After the game, Williams said he was “pissed” with himself after his only negative play – an interception of a pass intended for DJ Moore in the first half. Maybe that was the spark he needed.

“That’s a pass I don’t miss, you don’t want to miss, and do something like that,” Williams said. “And so yeah, I was a little pissed off after that, I guess [to] resetting myself was important. But with the idea still in the back of my mind, as you know, that can’t happen again, and let’s get out here and start scoring.

From then on, that’s pretty much all Williams did.

The question now is of course whether Williams can maintain his success. The ramping up took a few games. And the Bears’ schedule is about to get a lot tougher. Chicago’s NFC North, is the first division since the NFL merged with the American Football League in 1970 every team with at least four wins during the first six games of a season. And according to FTN analyst Aaron Schatzthe Bears had the second-easiest list yet, based on opponent-adjusted efficiency, and no team has a more imposing effort the rest of the way.

Williams will undoubtedly experience more adversity — because no young quarterback can completely avoid them. But based on the show so far, the Bears have finally, thankfully, found the solution they’ve been searching in vain for longer than any other professional football franchise.