Chicago QB Caleb Williams poised to break Bears’ franchise records in 2025, says top NFL analyst

If you eliminate the words “Jayden” and “Daniels” from your vocabulary, you’d probably feel that Caleb Williams had one helluva rookie year.

Caleb Williams Rookie Year

4040 Total Yards
20 TDS
6 INTs
63% Completion pic.twitter.com/BIJZaHaY98
— jaymani🥷🏾 (@plentymillions) January 5, 2025

Unfortunately for Caleb, the rest of his career will be comped with that of Daniels, the quarterback who was drafted one spot after the Chicago Bears signal caller in 2024.

And that’s fair. Any player who’s chosen with the top pick of the NFL Draft will be held to a higher standard—especially if the gentleman drafted immediately after him plays the same position…and played it better during their respective rookie seasons. (See: Young, Bryce and Stroud, C.J.)

But taking into account that Caleb was kneecapped during his freshman year by horrid play calling and a Swiss cheese offensive line, we can forgive him. That said, if he underperforms in 2025, a second round of forgiveness will be a tough get.

Fortunately, according to a guy who knows about this sort of stuff, the sophomore QB will be just fine.

Happy New Year

In an interview with Chicago Sports Stuff, former ESPN and Yahoo NFL contributor Andy Behrens hyped Williams as a 2025 breakout candidate, noting, “If you look at Caleb’s 2024 and don't judge it by the standards of him being the number one overall pick—making him a guy that Chicago passed on literally everyone else to get—you’ll have a different take.

caleb williams full season highlight tape pic.twitter.com/n31EI4QIid
— Grim Warren (@GrimKevinWarren) June 12, 2025

“If you had evaluated Drake Maye’s season or Bo Nix's season and put them under the same microscope, and gave them the same attention you give the number one overall pick, then we’d talk more about their missed opportunities, their misfires, and their poor decisions. It wasn’t like Nix had a completely clean season, nor did Maye.”

Wait’ll This Season

Taking Chicago's new on- and off-field changes into account, Behrens is confident that Williams will rewrite some of the Bears' single-season record book.

“The Bears’ leaderboard in terms of single season passing is just absolutely embarrassing. In this era, a quarterback can have a 4,000-yard season and it might not be considered a good year—and the Bears haven’t had a single 4,000-yard passer in franchise history. At the minimum, Caleb tops that. I'd be shocked if he didn't make a jump and throw for 4,000-plus-yards.”

Starting QBs since '92, (listed if they had majority of starts any season):

Packers:
Favre, Rodgers

Bears:
Harbaugh, Walsh, Kramer, Krieg, Matthews, McNown, Miller, Stewart, Krenzel/Hutchinson (tie), Orton, Grossman, Cutler, Barkley, Trubisky,... Dalton?
— Alec Schultz (@ASchultz7) March 17, 2021

If that goes down as projected—if Caleb goes for 4K—neither the word “Jayden” nor the word “Daniels” will bother us again.