LAKE FOREST, Ill. -- Before the start of training camp practices in late July, Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson set a goal for quarterback Caleb Williams to complete 70% of his passes.
Johnson acknowledged the challenge of consistently reaching that figure. After all, Williams was below the league average of 63.5% as a rookie when he completed 62.5% of his passes while throwing for 3,451 yards, 20 touchdowns and six interceptions. Only five quarterbacks, including the Lions' Jared Goff, who the Bears will face Sunday in Johnson's Detroit homecoming (1 p.m. ET, Fox), hit that 70% mark in 2024. None were second-year players learning a new offense.
But Johnson persisted with his lofty vision for the 23-year-old quarterback to use the 70% figure as a benchmark for success. When asked in the middle of August how Williams was faring in hitting that mark, Johnson admitted that his completion percentage had gotten better as camp went on, but the quarterback had not hit that figure as often as coaches would like.
So long as it kept trending toward 70% in practices, Johnson could accept the ups and downs.
"You would like to think that over the course of practice that we're completing 70% or more, or that's hard to just magically arise in a game," Johnson said in July.
Williams' accuracy spanned the spectrum during the Bears' 27-24 season-opening loss to the Minnesota Vikings when he completed 21 of his 35 attempts (60%) for 210 yards a touchdown and no interceptions. He also rushed for a touchdown on the game's opening drive.
On one hand, he was the most accurate he'd ever been in a Bears uniform, completing 13 of 16 passes in the first half. Williams connected on his first 10 attempts to mark the longest streak of his career and the longest by a Bears quarterback to start a season opener since 1978.
The second half told a different story.
Williams' completion percentage dipped from 81% to 42% in the third and fourth quarter while recording an off-target rate of 29.4%, which was an NFL-worst for Week 1. In the process, the Bears blew an 11-point lead in the final frame on the way to their first loss.
"You did everything up to that point right, and then you miss a pass," Williams said. "And it's frustrating.
"That's something that we practice on, something that we get after and something that I'm going to keep getting after, keep correcting. Passes that I feel that I typically don't miss in those moments and situations, especially with some of the passes being what they were and how wide open. You miss and you move on. You correct and you find ways to get better."
Several factors stood out to Williams and his coaches as they aimed to pinpoint why the quarterback went from precision to missing in spurts.
Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores, who is known for aggressively blitzing quarterbacks, didn't dial up the pressure on Williams until the second half. The quarterback was blitzed on 25% of his dropbacks in the first half and 44% of his dropbacks in the second half and struggled to generate much production against it (5-of-12 for 29 yards and a touchdown, which came with 2:02 remaining).
There was also the element of Williams' footwork. Finding examples of where his feet weren't clean in the pocket provided an easy correction. But even when his feet were in the right place, Williams noticed instances where he wasn't as quick in "letting it rip."
"I think that's always something that quarterbacks need to have in their mind and something I always try to have in my mind, is be decisive," he said. "The decisiveness always wins. When you start being hesitant and things like that, you start missing passes and easy passes that you feel that you don't typically miss."
There were also instances where Williams looked like he was in a rush, a contrast from how strong his mechanics were when he was playing on time and in rhythm.
"When he was doing [his footwork] properly, the ball came out on time and I thought he was delivering accurate footballs," Johnson said. "But it's still not 100% all the time, and that's something that we're working through."
There's a big enough sample size since the start of Williams rookie season (18 games) that highlights the quarterback's struggles with accuracy.
His 22% off-target rate is the second worst in the NFL (only Indianapolis Colts QB Anthony Richardson Sr. -- who lost his starting spot to Daniel Jones -- is worse at 25%). There are areas of the field where Williams' inaccuracy shows up more than others (31% off-target rate in the red zone, second-worst in the NFL) along with certain places he's throwing to where it shows up more (-5.2% CPOE when throwing left, 31st of 37 qualifying quarterbacks).
Against the Vikings, Williams was most accurate when getting the ball out in 2.5 seconds or less (62.5%) versus waiting longer to throw the ball (57.9% when throwing over 2.51 seconds). His completion percentage was slightly higher (61.5%) when taking snaps under center versus in the shotgun (59.1%) and increased considerably when not pressured (61.5% vs. 55.6%).
"There were some things that he did that were top-notch, and I would put him up there with some of the best in the NFL," Johnson said. "He had a couple throws with guys in his face that he delivered on target that were very tough.
"I thought he did a good job evading when he felt pressure and yet there were still some that we would like to have back. There were probably three or four of them that we counted on tape that, at a minimum, that we would want back."
With another division opponent this week -- and the Lions are 6.5-point favorites, according to ESPN BET -- Williams hopes to build off the good moments from his 2025 debut. After a whole offseason spent helping him improve on some of his biggest weaknesses, doubling down on what worked early to help the Bears build a lead on the Vikings is the approach the quarterback takes into Week 2.
"Some of it is just trusting and believing," Williams said. "That's the biggest part of it is being able to trust Coach Johnson and trust my teammates and things like that and keep doing what I was doing in the first half: Take what the defense gives me and moving the ball down the field and being decisive.
"There was a lot of positive that came out of that. Obviously we had negatives. Within that game, kind of how coach Johnson said, we had more negative plays than they did and we lost the game. It's being able to find in those moments where maybe a drive goes bad, and it's being able to find those ways to come back together and go out the next drive and be efficient and do what we did in the first half."