Part two<\/a> revealed that struggles with accuracy were his largest weakness, but that improved significantly late in the season.<\/p>\n Today, we\u2019ll continue diving deeper into Williams\u2019 statistics profile to try and figure out how well he performed in a few different play types.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Play Action<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start by looking at how Caleb Williams did on play-action drop backs compared to standard passing plays. Before I present the full data, I want to briefly explain two PFF stats that will be used:<\/p>\n Big Time Throw.\u00a0These are best described as a pass with excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field and\/or into a tighter window. In other words, these are really good, difficult passes that should result in highly valuable big plays. A higher % here is better.<\/p>\n Turnover Worthy Play.\u00a0These include fumbles in the pocket, interceptions thrown, and interceptable passes that were not caught. A lower % here is better.<\/p>\n Both of these stats will admittedly have some subjectivity, but they provide a useful glimpse into how frequently a QB makes a really good play vs. a really bad one.<\/p>\n The table below shows how Williams performed in a wide variety of statistics in play action (orange) vs. other dropbacks (blue), and also includes Williams\u2019 rank (in parentheses) out of 32 total NFL QBs who had at least 250 pass attempts. Information on the spread of all NFL QBs is also provided for each stat. Cells highlighted in green indicate Williams was among the top 25% of QBs in this category, while those in red indicate Williams was in the bottom 25% of QBs. All data comes from\u00a0Pro Football Focus (PFF)<\/a>\u00a0unless otherwise noted.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n (If you can\u2019t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)<\/p>\n A few thoughts:<\/p>\n As expected, Caleb Williams had a much higher rate of play action passes in 2025 than his rookie season, when play action accounted for only 17% of his pass attempts<\/a>. This continues a Ben Johnson trend<\/a> from his time in Detroit.<\/p>\n It makes sense too, as QBs are generally better in play action (higher completion percent and yards\/attempt, fewer turnover-worthy plays and sacks). Caleb mostly followed the same trends as his NFL peers, though it\u2019s worth noting his turnover-worthy play % was much higher on play-action plays.<\/p>\n The biggest thing that stands out is that Caleb has one of the longest average times to throw of any QB in the NFL in both samples, but this isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing. Time to throw is a measure of play style, not play effectiveness.<\/p>\n Caleb likes to hold the ball and hunt big plays, which is fine as long as it doesn\u2019t lead to too many sacks. It did not in 2025, so that isn\u2019t anything to be concerned about.<\/p>\n Caleb\u2019s sack rates and pressure to sack rates (the % of pressures that turn into sacks) are extremely low in both samples, which we should expect to see in most samples going forward. Caleb was great in this area in 2025.<\/p>\n As expected, Caleb\u2019s accuracy and completion % are low in both samples. We looked at that in part 2<\/a>, and it should be expected to be that way in pretty much every sample for this whole series.<\/p>\n One thing I noticed is that the difference between accuracy and completion percentage was 9% in play action passes and 15% on other passes, while the NFL average drop was in the 9-10% range for both samples. This can mostly be accounted for by receiver drops: Caleb saw a 5.6% drop rate (around NFL average) on play action passes but a 9.4% drop rate on non-play action passes. It\u2019s hard to chalk this up to anything more than a weird coincidence.<\/p>\n Play action really plays into Caleb\u2019s strengths pushing the ball downfield. The average target depth was much higher, and Caleb did appreciably better (relatively) in yards\/attempt as well. Caleb also did a great job of producing big-time throws in play action, which likely led to plenty of explosive passes (though I don\u2019t have the ability to parse the data and see which of those were in play action).<\/p>\n Time to Throw<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look now at a different way to split a QB\u2019s pass attempts, based on how long it took him to throw the ball. PFF splits this into less than 2.5 seconds and more than 2.5 seconds.<\/p>\n There\u2019s going to be some overlap with the play action data here, as the time to throw is generally longer on play action than other plays (average 3.2 vs. 2.7 seconds, as shown in the table above). So, we might expect to see some of the similar trends as above, but this is still a different enough way of parsing the sample that some results might be unique.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The table below shows the same stats as the play action one above. Once again, Williams\u2019 data is shown ranked out of the 32 QB sample, information is provided about the spread of the 32 QBs, and cells for Williams\u2019 stats in green or red represent Williams ranking in the top 25% or bottom 25%, respectively.<\/p>\n A few thoughts:<\/p>\n As expected given his high time to throw mark, Caleb has a very low rate of passes thrown in under 2.5 seconds. These quick passes are mostly designed plays, with an extremely short target depth, no big-time throws, and very low rates of negative plays. The accuracy on these passes needs to be better (as we saw in part 2<\/a>) in order to help the Bears consistently pick up small chunks of yards and stay ahead of the chains.<\/p>\n The slower-developing plays, then, representing the bulk of Caleb\u2019s passes, nearly 2\/3 of his attempts. Again, this is a play style thing, and there is zero reason to be concerned about the slow time to throw given the low sack rate on these plays.<\/p>\n On these passes, Caleb does a good job pushing the ball down field, and producing big-time throws. Once again, we see the accuracy needs to improve, but that\u2019s a given across the board.<\/p>\n Something else that needs to improve is the yardage gained. Caleb does a great job of buying time while avoiding sacks, which should lead to a high rate of chunk plays that pick up big yardage as pass catchers have ample time to work open. The average yards gained here, however, are quite poor, which needs to change.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/194685f5b4ef31ea27cd60bfdcf8cc88.jpeg\"\/)
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