Caleb Williams film room: The plays that could have been in No. 1 pick’s NFL debut

Carmen Vitali

NFL Reporter

It wasn’t the stellar debut Chicago wanted for Caleb Williams. It wasn’t the stellar debut Caleb Williams wanted for himself.

Yet despite his stat line reading 14 of 29 passing for just 93 yards and a 55.7 passer rating, the Chicago Bears won their season opener over the visiting Tennessee Titans 24-17 on Sunday. 

The defense appears to have picked up right where it left off at the tail end of last season, forcing three turnovers and capitalizing on them, too. Williams and his offense didn’t score a single touchdown and yet, there are still more than a few things to be encouraged about.

The first is the stellar defensive performance and knowing it’s a unit the team can rely on, especially as the offense gains its footing. Immediate offensive success with a new coordinator, new weapons and a new rookie quarterback under center should never have been the expectation. I’ve spent this entire offseason and preseason trying to temper immediate expectations for this Bears offense. More than likely, it wasn’t going to take hold right off the bat. There were going to be growing pains before the unit saw true success. Could it have happened? Sure. But the fact that it didn’t shouldn’t set off alarm bells in Chicago, especially knowing that the team can still win while the offense undergoes its growing pains.

If you were curious, guys like Aaron Rodgers and Matthew Stafford (Williams’ two favorite quarterbacks), didn’t have eye-popping debuts either. In Rodgers’ first start during the 2008 season, he went 18 of 22 for 175 yards and a touchdown in a win over the Vikings. Rodgers also had to recover his own fumble in the game. Keep in mind, this was after riding the bench behind Brett Favre for three seasons.

Stafford, who started immediately for the Lions, went just 16 of 37 for 205 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions. He had a passer rating of 27.4 in a loss to the New Orleans Saints in…

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Publish date : 2024-09-10 16:08:35

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