Bear Digest

How Far Caleb Williams and Bears Are From the Super Bowl LX Teams

A look at how the Bears compare to the Patriots and Seahawks, with an eye on becoming a Super Bowl team in Ben Johnson's second season.
Gene Chamberlain|
Caleb Williams rolls out of the pocket on a bootleg pass against Seattle last season.
Caleb Williams rolls out of the pocket on a bootleg pass against Seattle last season. | Talia Sprague-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

Bears coach Ben Johnson came up two wins short of doing what Mike Vrabel and seven other coaches have accomplished.

Vrabel, Gary Kubiak, Jim Caldwell, Jon Gruden, Bill Callahan, George Siefert, Red Miller and Don McCafferty all made the Super Bowl in their first year coaching their team. Instead, Johnson will hope to do what Seattle's Mike Macdonald has done and make it there in his second year as an NFL head coach.

For something like this to happen, Johnson will need a full team capable of winning a Super Bowl.

The Bears actually were better in some ways than the two teams everyone will have  their eyes on all this week in Santa Clara, Calif. There aren't many ways, though.

If they had managed to go another 15 to 20 yards and Cairo Santos kicked a winning field goal instead of Caleb Williams being picked off, they would have been playing the Seahawks for a berth in the big game. Then their weaknesses probably would have been very apparent.

"We have to work a little bit harder," Johnson said after the season ended. "We have to give a little bit more if we want to take this thing over the top.

"I mean, it's no different than if you're trying to lose weight. You're trying to lose 50 pounds. The first 30 is the easiest. The last 20, that's the hard part. And so, we did a nice job this year, but it's not enough. We have to do more.”

Here's how the Bears compare to the two teams who already shed that last 20, and are in the Super Bowl. Perhaps consider this a scale to weigh how far away the Bears are.

Overall offense

The Bears made a tremendous climb in total offense from last to sixth, and for whatever it's worth they were better than Seattle's offense at piling up yardage. Seattle was eighth.

The most important offensive stat is scoring, though, and the Bears were only ninth at this with their 441 points, 42 behind Seattle, which was third, and New England's second-best total of 490.

Running game

All three of these teams put together good attacks based on a two-back approach with quarterbacks who are mobile, although Darnold had to run less and for much less yardage than the other two. Either way, the Bears, with D'Andre Swift getting a career-best 1,087 yards and with Kyle Monangai at 783 actually do rate superior to both Super Bowl teams at running the ball. They owned the league's third-best rushing total and yards per carry (4.9).

With Kenneth Walker (1,027 yards) and Zach Carbonnet (730), Seattle was only 10th in rushing and a feeble 25th in yards per attempt (4.1). Neither TreVeyon Henderson (911) nor Rhamondre Stevenson (603) cracked 1,000 yards for the sixth-ranked New England ground game, and they wouldn't be ranked this high except for Drake Maye's 450 rushing yards. That's largely an outgrowth of the passing game's failure. They were a distant 14th (4.4) in yards per rush.

Passing game

Caleb Williams put on a good show as a comeback quarterback but he wasn't in a league with Maye and the passing game of Johnson was several clicks behind the one Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniel operated. On an individual basis, the Bears might have a better overall receiver corps for Williams to throw to as Stefon Diggs was his top target but Diggs keeps producing even at the age of 32.

Colston Loveland, Rome Odunze  and Luther Burden do give them a better group in terms of the future, if they can actually learn to, say, hold onto passes. The Bears' 29 dropped passes leaves them well short of what Seattle and New England both had. The Patriots tied for the fewest drops in the NFL with 13 and the Seahawks were third with only 15.

No one has a receiver like Seattle's Jaxon Smith-Njigba, but neither team protected their quarterback or avoided sacks like the Bears. They Bears gave up only 24 sacks. Darnold got sacked 27 times and Maye took a beating with 47.

Williams rated slightly better than Darnold as a passer in some ways but not in others, and neither one was close to Maye with his league-best marks of 72% completed, 8.9 yards per attempt and 113.5 passer rating.

Williams finished one spot better than Darnold in EPA and four spots behind him in passing EPA. Williams had a worse completion percentage and passer rating than Darnold but more TDs and half Darnold's total of 14 interceptions. Most importantly, Williams had a league-high six fourth-quarter comebacks (6) and was second in game-winning drives (6).

The Bears have a long way to go to reach New England's level of passing but they're already at or ahead of Seattle's even with Smith-Njigba's receiving brilliance.

Defense

If all of defense came down to taking away the football, they Bears would already be a Super Bowl team with their league highs of 33 takeaways and 23 interceptions. It isn't, and in almost every other way they are not only below these teams but also bottom third of the league.

There's little sense exploring it too deeply because it's such a wide discrepancy.

The Bears' overall number says it best. They were 29th on defense, 23rd preventing points.

The Super Bowl defense are superior groups, New England ranking fourth in scoring and eighth overall and Seattle No. 1 in scoring and sixth overall.

About the only way the Bears rank with either of those defenses beyond the takeaways that were fueled greatly by Nahshon Wright's eight total and Kevin Byard's seven interceptions was in sacks, where they tied New England at 35. Seattle's pass rush came close to breaking the 1984 Bears record of 72 sacks when they got 68 sacks.

In particular, both Super Bowl defenses had better linebacker play and against the run had better defensive line play than the Bears by quit a bit.

Dennis Allen pulled off quite the magic act by juggling injuries that had four to seven starters out on a weekly basis until late in the season and the turnovers made the difference. The Bears obviously need better defensive talent and better ability to play their scheme before they can even approach either Super Bowl defense, because it's relatively simple for them to rank high again in takeaways but not to be far and away the No. 1 team in the league at it.

Special teams

If special teams dictates anything about being a Super Bowl team, the Bears don't have to worry here. They're better than most teams in the league, though maybe not at the level of these two teams. But both New England and Seattle are far better on special teams than most Super Bowl teams have been.

The Bears were far superior to Seattle at preventing  punt return yards. The Seahawks gave up the second-worst average (15.5 yards) and the Bears were a slot better than New England at this, as well.

It was the exact opposite way on kick return average allowed,  although the Bears weren't among the bottom 10 despite giving up the game-opening kick for a TD to Cincinnati. They allowed 26.5 per return to New England's 25.3 and Seattle's fifth-best average of 24.0.

Seattle's Jason Myers (85.4%) had the benefit of better kicking conditions than either the Bears' Cairo Santos (83.3%) or New England's Anders Borrgales (84.4%) and Santos also had to cope with an injury that cost him two games.

In the return game, both Super Bowl teams rate better than the Bears and that's saying something because the Bears are well above the average for NFL returns with Devin Duvernay at 11.0 per punt return and 26.5 on kick returns. It's just that Seattle's Rashid Shaheed as world-class speed and averaged 29.9 on kick returns, 16.2 on punt returns and its other punt returner, Tony Horton, averaged 14.9. And New England's Marcus Jones was second team All-Pro with a 17.3-yard punt return average.

Just like in the kicking game, better conditions made it easier for Seattle's Michael Dickson to attain second team All-Pro at 49 yards for an averae and 38.5% inside the 20 but Tory Taylor still had a 47.8 average and was better than New England's Bryce Baringer, who was better than all three at percentage inside the 20.

The Seahawks and Patriots might have various special teams advantages but of the three, whose special teams came through with a blocked kick, onside kick recovery, long kick return and walk-off field goals in the clutch to win games?

Bottom line

The draft and free agency need to have heavy slants to the defensive side if they want to make the next big step to the level of the two teams playing in Santa Clara. But if you've been following them all year, you already knew this.

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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.