Evaluating Caleb Williams' rocky Week 1 performance | Bernstein & Holmes

this stat blew my mind this is from Bill Barnwell okay get your head around this for a second teams trailing by two or more scores at halftime who failed to score an offensive touchdown all game had been two and 306 since 2000 the Bears have made it three and 306 the Bears are who we thought they were it was like that game with the exception of the of turnovers right rexs turned the ball over six times in that game I'm I'm I'm not being hyperbolic he did he turned the ball over six times in that game and they won yep I've got a staff for you this is from our buddy Robert Mays from True Media 51.2% of the Bears offensive plays went for zero yards or negative yards oo really yes okay all right well look you know if you've been listening to this show we have gone out of our way to try to balance reality with exuberance yes and with excitement and with hope and with fun but we've we always have promised you from the moment this thing when the moment Lovey Smith decided screw it I'm going for the win build that man of statue and and and got that pick with everything else that was going on we said look we're going to bring you opinions that sometimes might burst your bubble Bernstein you're taking the fun out of this well sometimes guys pushing your Center into the back field can take the fun out of it too and I've been hung up on the center position since since the Super Bowl says before the Super Bowl hung up on improving the center position how do they still need a center there are questions all around that offensive line but this is this is why like you you hate to be a wet blanket because you want people to celebrate it's great for us when the Bears are good I actually think for the score this is a win-win because they won the game but you walk away from that game going there's some stuff that the Bears have got to figure out there's some stuff that Caleb has to figure out and the whole reason that we we tell you this is because we don't want you to forget the history of it rookie quarterbacks themselves struggle quite a bit and Bears quarterbacks suck well but I don't even want to make it Bears quarterback I'm just saying that's part of the history though but but like for example I kept pointing out all around the league you've got a rookie quarterback someone's telling you that that rookie quarterback is great and then you watched both Nick's play yesterday and you watch Jaden Daniels play yesterday and there were nice moments for both of them but you're like oh yeah that's right the NFL is really hard and when we played Matt Bowen's comments about dard Wilson and about the kinds of defenses that he was expecting there was a chorus that was telling us and telling you and we tried to bring it to you about working from the pocket mhm and making a Young quarterback make decisions from the pocket and have to see things and anticipate things rather than waiting for them to come open that's what a lot of smart people said was going to happen yes that's what happened and that's exactly and it's going to keep and you talk about hell coming to breakfast he's going to see all sorts of stuff Sunday night they've got enough talent and they've got creative creative people on the defensive side they are they're going to put him in some really awkward positions now the hope is that all of this like that's all of it is an opportunity to watch the growth of a quarterback for example one of the things that I hope that Caleb learns from yesterday is you know what you can't do in the NFL unless you are like real special run backwards yep yeah that's a bad idea there's a couple of guys who can get away with it Lamar and maybe Justin Fields [Music] maybe occasionally Patrick Mahomes will do that where he just backs up yeah the guy the guy in Arizona can can spin out of there he can he's he's got a little bit of Sizzle when he does that but you can't go 20 yards back that ends badly for you it it does so I hope that he learns that but here and I said it in the video last night I thought that the third down play before the second s Santos long field goal was a huge play by Caleb Williams huge taking up the slack well realizing that you had the penalty that put you 10 yards back and took you out of field goal range and it's a third was a third and 13 and and you go I don't need to get the first down I need to get us back yeah I have a third and 14 scramble short that was the field goal to cut it to one right that's a smart play an incompletion there probably doesn't get you the field goal getting six yards on that play may have changed the game you get into a position quarterback one of the quarterback's best friends is a good kicker and you and that's when and I said to people like on Twitter if they have to win this game with special teams and defense so be it and that's what they were able to do yesterday well the defense got better when Matt Eber Flo made some changes to the alignment and he realized that they were attacking the edges so he pulled the defensive ends out a little bit they widened some of their splits they were doing like almost like a wide n technique right but but it wasn't the the wide nine designed to just go balls out at the quarterback with ears pinned back it was more of a containment nine it it's it's you're using it so you can fill up space out there and that you have an extra body on the outside that's not getting washed out in some of the plays like the the flip side of what Dan's talking about was last night Aiden Hutchinson lines up in a wide n often and that's so that he can just use his speed to destroy tackle and get to the quarterback but yeah that was smart stuff like smart adjustments by the the Bears to understand offensively things were not clicking and they had to figure out a way to to win the game and I know that it wasn't pretty and it didn't look the way that people wanted it to look but I say this all the time wins buy you time it buys you time so think about how everyone feels today if they lose that game this is a coach's dream it that's what halftime felt like my God some of the the the Twitter conversation at halim was was insane yes and I know it would look bad it it sucked that was bad but the level of panic that set in after 30 minutes of football was hilarious yeah because it didn't look right people were expecting to see you know Caleb making great plays and it just he will like I think that that you're going to see great plays in the passing game for him because there were some opportunities there were also some drops yesterday but he threw a fluttery ball towards the end zone that's got to be caught but it was both hands it wasn't his best ball it hit him in both hands I agree 25 million but I'm I'm just saying that that's the type of stuff that happens in side of a game well I look at it like this that if you were going to get to N9 or 10 that had to be one of them and it was it was and you walk out of this game and you go okay everyone can take a deep breath you're still one and0 the defense it was maybe even better than what people thought and that adjustment inside because they were getting I'll give Tennessee credit they figured out how to use the aggression of the Bears against them with some misdirection stuff they're always going to be susceptible to that as their their coach to flow to the ball hits principle whatever it is you're going to be susceptible to some backside stuff but then they were like oh yeah you're will Levis that's right you're not good at football so why don't we just start doing some of that and then you can do your little thing where you're like I'm gonna flick it out of B oh wait there's a guy there and now he's running into the endzone and you're in surrender Cobra on the field before he's even past you you you look like you've been taken prisoner oh no what have I done