The Doctor Of Style wrote:
Tall Midget wrote:
The Doctor Of Style wrote:
Caleb Williams wasn't particularly impressive today either. Looked overmatched against the 2nd string defense of the Bengals. He also isn't particularly special when he has to throw out of the pocket either.
It was a little hard for me to tell if Williams needed to scramble as much as he did last night. I was surprised that Waldron called rollouts on the first two plays of the game. I definitely would have liked to see more passing from the pocket. The slant that Williams missed to Moore was a great pass, though, but the coverage was even better. Williams probably shouldn't have gone to Moore there, especially since Odunze was apparently coming open down field. The play-action bomb to Scott also appeared to be a perfect throw.
In the first 2 games it seems like Waldron is specifically calling for designed rollouts to get Caleb Williams going. Which leads me to believe that he thinks that either the O-Line is a problem or
Caleb's height is a problem. Won't really know for sure til the season starts if this is the plan going forward but it's apparent that the vast majority of his big plays have not been the result of his having to throw from the pocket.
Calebs height is fine -he’s eye to eye with Patrick Mahomes. Also, roll outs aren’t used because play callers need to make up for the height of a QB. They’re used to cut the field in half for easier reads, or scrambling purposes. Either way, roll outs are a part of almost every offense in the NFL so it’s weird to single the Bears out for implementing it.
As for passing from the pocket, Caleb has more than a few passes that came from the pocket and looked perfectly fine. The come back route that went for a 1st down to Moore in Calebs debut came from the pocket, the big dump off to the RB in that same game came from the pocket,
the deep throw to Odunze that was well placed and drew a PI in this last game game from the pocket and so on.. and if you actually watched him in college (and not just his highlight vids on YouTube) you’d know quite a bit of his passes actually came from the pocket and he was fine there too.
Passing from the pocket won’t be an issue for Caleb (outside of the line giving out), coming out from under center however is something he needs more time with. But that will come with time and experience.
JT O'Sullivan points out in his film breakdown that the pass was thrown to the wrong side of the receiver. It's true that Williams threw from the pocket frequently in college, although I don't recall him executing a lot of timing routes. On at least one play against the Bengals--the beautiful left sideline pass to Odunze--it looked like Williams scrambled when he didn't need to. He made an incredible play there, though, so it's hard to criticize him. But he certainly gave the defense an opportunity to take additional shots at him.