Why Caleb Williams’s sack-avoiding superpowers might be one-of-one

Caleb Williams isn’t close to being a finished product yet, even as he closes in on the most prolific passing season a Chicago Bears quarterback has ever had.

But one area of his game puts him in a stratosphere all his own, even amongst the game’s elite playmakers at the position.

Despite having the highest time to throw of any quarterback in the league according to Pro Football Focus, Williams shockingly ranks 38th in the league in pressure-to-sack percentage among quarterbacks with 87 or more dropbacks. For years, we’ve generally associated holding the ball a long time with taking a ton of sacks. But that hasn’t been true for Williams at all, who has gone down only 14 times all season despite frequently running around and buying time. Plus, Williams doesn’t typically cause his own pressures at a particularly high rate, with PFF calling just 16% of the pressures he faces his fault.

Football data cruncher Dan Pizzuta took to social media to quantify this even further, creating a graph that measures what he calls “creation time” (the difference between the time to pressure and time to throw when pressured) against pressure-to-sack rate. The result is staggering: Williams has by far the highest average “creation time” of any qualified quarterback at about 1.8 seconds (well ahead of second-place J.J. McCarthy’s average of 1.5 seconds) while posting the third-lowest pressure-to-sack rate on the whole board.

Interesting graph form @DanPizzuta I found over at Bluesky. Per Dan, Creation Time "is the difference between time to pressure and time to throw when pressured, then plotted it against pressure to sack rate." Data from @FTNFantasy.

Look at #Bears QB Caleb Williams all alone! pic.twitter.com/KIgmLhcjHN
— Lester A. Wiltfong Jr. (@wiltfongjr) November 13, 2025

Taking that into account, Williams might just be the hardest quarterback to sack in the entire league.

Of course, that won’t surprise anyone who watches the Bears and routinely sees Williams dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and dodging around would-be tacklers, despite some of them having him dead to rights. Besides, elite escapability and play out of structure were the two top items on the former Heisman Trophy winner’s scouting report coming out of college.

While Williams’s throws on the run haven’t always hit the target this year, it’s still remarkable how well he’s managed to avoid negative plays when under duress, both in terms of drive-killing sacks and turnovers (only four this season). He also made the Giants pay with key scrambles last weekend, including a game-winning touchdown run late in the fourth quarter.

His play from within the pocket has also improved in the past few weeks, prompting praise from rookie head coach Ben Johnson. If the Bears want to make noise in this year’s playoffs, that aspect of his game certainly must continue developing.

That said, it’s great to know Williams can lean on his exceptional ability to escape impossible situations when he needs it. Once he pairs that with more completions, especially down the field, the path to him realizing his billing as a generational QB talent will open even wider.

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