Bear Digest

Chicago Bears 2024 offensive report card: Rookie QB required more help

The receivers were a big help for Caleb Williams but the Bears found out in 2024 how much more is involved with supporting a rookie QB.
Gene Chamberlain|
Caleb Williams was sacked a Bears record 68 tiimes as the offensive line absorbed most of the blame.
Caleb Williams was sacked a Bears record 68 tiimes as the offensive line absorbed most of the blame. | Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

First of 3 parts

The Bears haven't been known for good offense but in 2024 they actually finished last offensively for the first time in 20 years.

The reasons for the failure largely centered around coaching but also failure to bring in the right talent to surround Caleb Williams.

They trumpeted their success with the addition of Keenan Allen, Rome Odunze and Gerald Everett to the wide receiver group and expectations were high for Williams. In training camp, the expectations were direct and specified.

“Lean on the guys around him, be instinctual, let those wild plays happen at the right time,” GM Ryan Poles said.

BEARS DEFENSIVE AND SPECIAL TEAMS REPORT CARD FOR 2024

FINAL BEARS GRADE OVERALL WITH GM AND HEAD COACH

The trouble is, it’s hard to produce wild plays or be instinctual from your back. The total of 68 sacks allowed was a Bears record and no matter how they spun it, the offensive line must take the bulk of the blame.

The Bears may have surrounded Williams with good receivers but they then inserted him in an offense designed for failure. It was like a NASCAR owner hiring the best possible driver and then putting him in a rusted out 2003 minivan.

Quarterback: D+

Only the final push to a game-winning field goal and some of his touchdown throws in the final six games kept Williams' grade from challenging failure. So much more was expected from the first pick in the draft. When Pro Football Focus and Pro Football Network both have Williams graded 33rd on the season in a 32-team league, and NFL.com rated him 27th, it hasn't quite been a dream rookie season. Williams needs to be better at every aspect of playing quarterback, including cadence, fakes, taking the ball from center, reading defenses and actually throwing.

Of particular focus must be deep passing, his footwork on all throws and seeing the field better. Too many times during the season the social media types with the All-22 film view saw Fields completely missing wide open receivers in the middle of the field while he looked elsewhere. Williams didn't make many really dumb throws, but he seemed afraid to challenge defenses, especially early in games. His road passer rating (80.8) was 13.8 below his home passer rating and his passer rating in tie games was a miserable 67.0. In games with a deficit of one TD or less, his rating was only 72.8. He showed the arm, flashed big plays but too often did very little to elevate the team. Williams set a lot of meaningless records but in the end did not compete well enough as a rookie.

Running Backs: C-

D'Andre Swift broke seven tackles, according to Stathead/Pro Football Reference, or one every 36.1 runs. Only Travis Etienne (one in 50 runs) broke fewer tackles among the top 53 for total carries. A lead back in an offense can't play this way. Swift plays like a complementary back when the Bears paid for a starter. He did a fine job breaking away on occasional runs and making occasional plays in the passing game. But break a tackle, somewhere, sometime. The guy who can break tackles, Roschon Johnson, was injured too much and the coaching staff seemed to have no idea how to use him when he was healthy. Travis Homer is supposedly a great blocker but if that's all he's going to bring to a roster he should play tackle or guard. This group needs upgrading badly.

Receivers: C+

It's not easy for a receiver to play with a rookie quarterback who is running for his life. When they started to finally make connections consistently with Williams, it was too late to make a difference. DJ Moore's 966 yards was well short of what's needed for a 98-catch season, especially when he was 11th in the league in yards after the catch (539). Rome Odunze had a respectable 734-yard rookie year on 54 catches but three TD catches is low for someone with great red zone potential. Keenan Allen had the same issue as Moore, low yardage (10.6 per catch) for his 70 receptions. He also had a career-low receptions/targets ratio of 57.9% and a career-low yards per game.

Cole Kmet's 47 catches were his fewest since his rookie year even as he posted an 85.5% catch percentage to lead all NFL starting tight ends. The receivers weren't the problem. The coaching, blocking, running and passing were.

Offensive Line: D-

This was a case where the sum total of what looked like high analytical grades was far less than it should have been. Even if you give Caleb Williams blame for 40% of his own sacks, which seems high, then the offensive line gets a failed grade for protecting him. Pro Football Focus even noted how it gave relatively high 70.0 grades to four of their five starters and even some of the subs like Matt Pryor and Bill Murray, were graded high. However, they couldn't stay healthy again. Again PFF's pass blocking efficiency rating for this group was high, at 12th best. Tell that to Williams or to the receivers who never got the chance to catch passes. Braxton Jones had a solid performance but too many missed games and too many times got beat from the snap. Coleman Shelton held his ground at center after a slow start while right tackle Darnell Wright was the most promising lineman for the future. Better health and a few upgrades can make this work.

Coordinator/Coaching: F

It seemed like a breath of fresh air when to someone suffering from smoke inhalation when Thomas Brown took over the attack from Shane Waldron, but even then there was only so much the interim coordinator and then head coach could do with the attack. After all, he was running an offense with terrible design flaws. Waldron’s idea was to strike for big plays every down but the result was a team next to last in first downs. It wasn’t surprising considering his Seahawks teams never finished higher than 31st in possession time and twice ranked last in plays per game. The Bears’ stats in this regard were elevated somewhat by Brown’s impact but Waldron buried them.

The biggest failure came in handling Williams. A rookie passer wasn’t something Waldron took into account. Easier reads and targets, fewer predictable wide receiver screens and making better use of tight ends never occurred with Waldron’s play designs and game plans. Play calls were so long and tough to say that by the time Williams got them from the sideline, the Bears were being challenged by the play clock. There seemed to be little idea of how to use Williams’ unique ability to throw on the run, or that it was often forgotten if they did rely on it a few times.  Too much emphasis on running plays by receivers, prenap penalties and the dumb Velus Jones running back experiment rounded out the most miserable year on offense since Terry Shea was coordinator in 2004.

Overall D-

If not for the brilliance of Moore and Allen and the promise shown by Odunze, the 2024 Bears offense would be an absolute failure.  It was anyway, but at least there was something to look at on occasion. The Bears thought they set up their rookie quarterback for success by assembling a receiver corps of standouts but they didn’t take into account his blockers and the play caller/play designer. Those matter, too.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.