All of Chicago held its breath after watching Caleb Williams hit the Soldier Field turf in obvious pain on Sunday. They immediately had nightmarish thoughts of a torn Achilles or ACL. He was done for the year, and the season was lost. People went to dark places watching him get carted off. What would the tests uncover? There was at least a small sigh of relief when the Bears declared him out with a hamstring injury. That at least meant he’d avoided shredding his knee or ankle. The question from there was simple: how bad is it?
We finally got an answer the following morning. Tom Pelissero of The Ringer revealed that Williams had avoided a serious injury, even stating that the Bears won’t rule him out for next Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Unfortunately, the optimism dimmed somewhat when head coach Ben Johnson shared details during his interview on ESPN 1000. The Bears have declared the quarterback “week-to-week” at this stage. Anybody who knows football understands this means there is a strong likelihood Williams will miss at least one game. Johnson confirmed as much when he stated he would “likely miss some time.”
Caleb Williams is at least on stable ground.
He has been here before. In December of 2022, he suffered a nasty hamstring injury in the Pac-12 championship against Utah. Though he managed to finish the game, he likely would’ve missed multiple weeks. Lucky for him, USC’s next game wasn’t until a month later, giving him enough time to recover. That won’t be the case this time. Williams must deal with the idea of missing at least one or two games as he works to get himself right. Hamstrings are notoriously tricky muscles to heal.
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The Bears don’t seem overly nervous about the prospect. Losing Caleb Williams sucks, but they feel they have a good enough situation to survive for a couple of weeks without him. Part of this is the strength of their running game with D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai. Another part is the presence of backup quarterback Tyson Bagent. While not the level of talent Williams is, he’s earned a reputation for being smart, accurate, and efficient. That should be enough in this system to remain competitive.
The Bears’ objective is clear.
Keep the train on the tracks. In situations like this, the smart thing to do is not overthink it. Coach Johnson should have a straightforward game plan in mind for Philadelphia. Stick with the run and instruct Bagent to get the ball to his best playmakers. That means heavy targets for Colston Loveland, Rome Odunze, and Luther Burden. He already showed signs of that in the game on Sunday. Six of the 9 passes he threw after coming in for Williams were to those three guys. The only exception was D’Andre Swift.
One thing we can expect with Bagent is that he’ll run the plays as designed. He will be a true extension of Johnson out there. We’ve seen how effective that can be, as you saw with Jared Goff in Detroit. The Eagles’ defense is a rough first test, but the Bears have no choice. This is why they stuck with Bagent over bringing in someone with more experience. They believe he is prepared for this challenge.
