There has been a minor change in how Caleb Williams sets up for the snap.
Last week, the Chicago Bears shared several pictures from the players working out at Halas Hall, and social media sleuths noticed something new about quarterback Caleb Williams. After setting up for the snap with his right foot forward as a rookie, he’s flipped it for this season, and now his left foot is staggered in front.
Nicholas Moreano, who does a great job on the Bears beat for The Bigs, asked head coach Ben Johnson about Caleb moving his left foot in front, and he shared his response on social media.
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve done it a number of ways in my time in the league, and really over the last few years, I’ve kind of gravitated towards that,” Johnson said. “It’s something that I feel pretty strongly about. He [Caleb] and I talked about it, the reasons why we want to do it. I think it helps out certainly with the quick game from the gun, and then helps us being a little bit better at a throwing posture for a lot of the other things that we’re asking him to do. When we talked about it initially, he was already kind of exploring that himself. So it wasn’t so much us telling him to do it. It was more a mutual, ‘yeah, let’s see what this looks like.’ And I think he’s taken a knack to it.”
A quarterback’s footwork should be timed to the routes his receivers are running, and good footwork starts with the setup. So this may be a small change, but it can pay dividends in the long run for the offense’s effectiveness.