{"id":302705,"date":"2025-08-20T07:35:28","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T07:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/302705\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T07:35:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T07:35:28","slug":"caleb-williams-other-bears-starters-will-play-in-preseason-finale-against-kansas-city-chiefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/302705\/","title":{"rendered":"Caleb Williams, other Bears starters will play in preseason finale against Kansas City Chiefs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caleb Williams made his debut in Ben Johnson’s Chicago Bears offense Sunday, and the former Heisman Trophy winner and 2024 No. 1 overall pick teased his franchise-changing potential, which was often hard to locate during his rookie season.<\/p>\n

That was against a Buffalo Bills team playing practically only backups, though.<\/p>\n

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Johnson is trotting out Williams and other Bears starters again Friday night, this time on the road and against a perennial Super Bowl-contending Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> team that will kick off the teams’ preseason finale with its starters as well.<\/p>\n

“We’ll go ahead, and we’ll play [the starters],” Johnson said Tuesday on “Up & Adams.”<\/a><\/p>\n

He added: “We’re going to get through a couple days here of practice, and we’ll determine for how long. But we need to go through this.”<\/p>\n

Williams’ first drive against the Bills couldn’t have gone any better. Backed up at his own 8-yard line after an ill-advised kickoff return, the former Oklahoma and USC quarterback connected with both of his tight ends, a Johnson staple. First he found rookie Colston Loveland, then he dialed up a 28-yard throw over the middle for Cole Kmet. That set the tone for a game-opening scoring drive that saw Williams pile up 97 passing yards \u2014 he also overcame an offensive holding penalty \u2014 on 5-of-6 passing. He capped off the series with a 36-yard touchdown. Facing a third-and-5, Williams beamed a well-timed pass to wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus, who galloped in space, gobbled up yards after the catch and reached the end zone.<\/p>\n

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Williams’ second drive didn’t end in points. In fact, he completed only 1-of-4 attempts during the series, but his third-down pass to Rome Odunze probably could have been reeled in despite being a tad wide.<\/p>\n

Still, he finished the night 6 of 10 for 107 yards and a touchdown, complete with a celebratory fist pump.<\/p>\n

That performance calmed some nerves in Chicago following reports of Williams’ continued inconsistency in training camp while he pored into Johnson’s complex offensive system.<\/p>\n

Johnson didn’t play Williams in the Bears’ preseason opener. The former Lions offensive coordinator \u2014 the engineer of Detroit’s league-leading 33.2 points per game attack last season \u2014 later explained that he thought there was more value in the 80-100 additional reps his quarterback collected in practice than if he had played in the Aug. 10 exhibition against the Miami Dolphins.<\/p>\n

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Williams was finally on display over the weekend, and the initial results dominated headlines.<\/p>\n

Both he and Johnson will be drawing more attention against the Chiefs on Friday night at Arrowhead Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caleb Williams made his debut in Ben Johnson’s Chicago Bears offense Sunday, and the former Heisman Trophy winner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2063],"tags":[1035,53,1036,391,346,3744,590,146,7,12812,118,110,2438,2437,251,6,11501,2495],"class_list":{"0":"post-302705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-chiefs","8":"tag-ben-johnson","9":"tag-buffalo-bills","10":"tag-caleb-williams","11":"tag-chicago-bears","12":"tag-chiefs","13":"tag-cole-kmet","14":"tag-colston-loveland","15":"tag-detroit","16":"tag-football","17":"tag-heisman-trophy-winner","18":"tag-kansas-city","19":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","20":"tag-kansascity","21":"tag-kansascitychiefs","22":"tag-miami-dolphins","23":"tag-nfl","24":"tag-olamide-zaccheaus","25":"tag-rome-odunze"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115059944501880844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}