Bears have Caleb Williams as QB, and some of the same issues protecting him

HOUSTON — The Houston Texans came from everywhere. All angles, all speeds, all converging for a town hall meeting atop Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams.

When it was over, the Chicago Bears’ No. 1 draft pick had been sacked seven times, more than any quarterback in a single game this young season. According to the league’s Next Gen Stats, Williams was blitzed 20 times in passing situations and pressured 36 times on 37 dropbacks — the latter statistic making it seem as if the Texans lined up in their SUVs for every snap.

The end result was a predictable 19-13 loss that felt all too familiar in Chicago: a struggling quarterback, a defense that kept the final score respectable, and a host of problems that might not be solved quickly. All that … and pain.

“A little bruised,” Williams said afterward, when asked about the punishment he received for the loss. “You know, I took a few knocks today. I’m going to get in the ice tub and do whatever I have to do to make sure my body is ready for tomorrow, the other days of training and obviously the next game.”

For the Bears, it’s a concerning tipping point early in the season. Maybe not a time to panic after just two games, but certainly a sign that something fundamental needs to change in the scheme to try to fix some very real protection issues. They can get away with it against a struggling Tennessee Titans team that Also the middle of the Bears’ offensive line in a Week 1 win for Chicago. But they’re not going to get away with it against a franchise like the Texans, which is built on the kind of architecture the Bears crave: a frenetic, nasty defense up front with a stingy secondary; a franchise quarterback who seems destined to be a special kind of difference-maker for the next decade and beyond; and a surrounding cast of high-end skill position players who can match up with any other offense in the league.

There are some fundamental underlying differences for the Texans. They have an offensive line that has been whittled down to a presentable unit over time, and a running game that saw a significant investment in the offseason with the acquisitions of Joe Mixon and Cam Akers alongside Dameon Pierce. That trio should form a respectable running rotation when all three players are eventually healthy.

The Texans’ intent was clear going into this season. Even after quarterback C.J. Stroud put together a historically polished rookie season, the franchise wasn’t going to bank on him becoming a 40+ pass-attempts-per-game player. Instead, offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik would scheme to achieve the kind of balance that helped his offensive line keep Stroud safe. It’s why you saw Houston split 36 ​​rushing attempts between running backs and wideouts in Week 1. It’s a formula that was also intended against the Bears, before Mixon was taken out of the game by a hip-drop tackle early in the third quarter.

Even with Mixon’s leg injury, Sunday night should be a resonant night for the Bears. What the Texans did for Stroud, the Bears need to do for Williams. Starting with an offensive line that already looks so overwhelmed that it’s being compared to the units that have often shut down Justin Fields the past few seasons. To the point that Williams has been pressured multiple times from every position on his line. From left tackle to right and everything in between. And a few times from tight end.

It produced an offensive flow that never looked steady or crisp, with Williams repeatedly throwing over the heads of his receivers or throwing ill-advised passes while running — hinting at the kind of chaos outside the structure that has some talent evaluators concerned ahead of the 2024 NFL Draft. But if you want Williams to operate within the structure, you have to provide the structure he can rely on. That’s not what happened against the Texans, and it’s why he exits the second week of the regular season without a touchdown to date and a pair of passing performances that have been nothing short of ugly.

“If you look at it, we obviously had seven sacks on the offensive line — everybody’s going to talk about that kind of stuff,” Bears head coach Matt Eberflus said. “I believe protection is everybody. Protection is the tight ends, it’s the runners, it’s the offensive line, it’s the quarterback. It’s everybody involved. … As far as running the ball, we obviously want to run the ball better than what we were doing. It was OK, but not good enough. We’ve got to establish the run game. I think that’s always a good friend for a young quarterback if you can do that.”

There will undoubtedly be pressure on new coordinator Shane Waldron, whose play-calling has yielded 353 yards of offense through two games, despite one of the league’s worst running games. That’s at odds with what Waldron was supposed to bring to his two-year stint as the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator — when he helped balance the scheme between the run and the pass. His work in Chicago was expected to be the opposite, moving the Bears away from a run-heavy offense and balancing it with Williams’ ability to inject a high-octane passer into the middle of the scheme. The result has been a mess, and it was on full display against the Texans.

While Waldron’s hand in the scheme will get attention, it won’t be enough to distract from the offensive line, which was repeatedly crushed in a myriad of ways by the Texans. The epitome of that came late in the fourth quarter on a drive that could have given the Bears a comeback victory. Riding on momentum and facing 2nd-and-10 at their own 48-yard line, Bears right tackle Darnell Wright (who was also in penalty trouble) made a terrible mistake on Texans defensive end Danielle Hunter, crushing Williams for a loss of 8 yards that the quarterback never saw coming. It effectively ended the game, sucking all the momentum out of Chicago and leaving the Bears to struggle with two more breathless plays that produced a one-yard run by Williams and a badly missed incomplete pass that ended up a full zip code away from rookie wideout Rome Odunze.

These kinds of offensive line problems are rarely solved in a season, unless you can devise protection packages that move a quarterback and take pressure off his line, or establish a running game that allows blockers to impose themselves and find some chemistry. Time will tell if the Bears can do either. But the goal and the action should be clear by now. They have some of the trappings of what the Texans have become. Now they know how far behind they are in the buildup. That’s kind of the message Stroud gave Williams when the two met at midfield after Williams had been crushed for most of the night.

“I just told (Williams) that everything that got you here is going to take care of you in the long run,” Stroud said. “Don’t hang your head. Don’t let a tough time get you down. It’s not going to be easy. You were picked No. 1 for a reason.”

Stroud was talking about Williams’ talent. But he could just as easily have been talking about the past failures of the last quarterback with high expectations, which led to Williams’ selection in the draft. After the Texans’ drubbing of Williams on Sunday, those failures of Justin Fields, and some of the problems they caused, seem closer than anyone realized.