(Photo: David Banks, USA TODAY Sports)
Heading into the 2025 season, no player on the Bears had more pressure on him to succeed than Caleb Williams.
Selected with the number one overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, expectations were sky-high for Williams as a rookie. Unfortunately, the results were bumpier than many expected, especially when compared to some of his peers from that draft class.
In 2025, the hope was that with Johnson in the building, Williams would have a better coaching infrastructure in order to let his exceptional physical traits flourish at the professional level. While there were still some struggle areas for Williams this past season, the Bears could not be happier with the progress that they saw from their number one pick from the year prior.
Williams had perhaps the best quarterback season in franchise history in 2025 (although shout out to Sid Luckman in 1943). While he wasn’t able to eclipse the 4,000 yard mark, Williams set the franchise record with 3,942 yards passing, doing so despite only having one 300-yard passing game all season. Williams also showed a good ability to make big plays while protecting the ball, as he finished with 27 touchdowns to seven interceptions. These numbers resulted in a significant improvement in his efficiency on a per throw basis as he finished the year with a 6.76 adjusted net yards per attempt, good for 11th in the NFL.
A lot of Williams’ success in 2025 had to do with the improvements he made in key areas of his game. After taking a league-leading 68 sacks in 2024, Williams cut that number to 24 in 2025. While some of this is due to the improvements made along the offensive line, Williams was simply much better at managing pressure as his pressure to sack rate dropped from 28.2% as a rookie to 10.8% in his sophomore campaign. Williams was also a much more accurate deep ball passer, as his adjusted completion percentage jumped from 28% in 2024 to 49.3% in 2025.
Throughout the year, Williams was consistently at his best in clutch situations. Williams was a catalyst for many of the Bears’ seven comeback victories, with many iconic moments where his natural talent took over to win the Bears games. Whether it was his late game-winning scores against the Bengals and Giants, the walk-off deep ball to DJ Moore against the Packers, the 4th and 8 throw in the Wild Card Round or the crazy touchdown to Cole Kmet to send the game to overtime against the Rams, the Bears seemed to never be out of a game due to Williams’ consistent ability to pull a rabbit out of his hat late.Â
All-in-all, the Bears needed to have a clearer answer one way or the other of whether Williams was the franchise guy coming out this season. Based on his performance this past year, there is no doubt that the Bears have their guy. How great “the Iceman” becomes will ultimately be determined by how he improves the other aspects of his game to match the insane physical ability and clutch performances that defined his 2025 campaign.Â