LAKE FOREST, Ill. (WGN) — Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson left little to the imagination on whether or not the first team offense and defense would see the field Sunday against the Buffalo Bills.
“Our starters are going to play. Everyone’s going to play,” Johnson said before Wednesday’s practice session. Johnson had previously said that he would give the Bears an off day on Tuesday before making a decision on playing time.
Braxton Jones, Colston Loveland and Luther Burden III were the only players competing for first team reps that saw game action last week during a 24-24 tie against the Miami Dolphins at Soldier Field.
How does this impact Caleb Williams?
There’s a learning curve every time a new coaching staff is brought in on an NFL team. For Johnson and Caleb Williams, installing a new offense has been no different.
The Bears’ head coach has approached getting Williams—and the rest of his roster, for that matter—up to speed by overloading them with verbiage and play calls to see what they can handle. Then as time goes on, Chicago’s coaching staff will simplify both to emphasize what the offense does best, then expand from there.
A part of that strategy was the emphasis on starters playing in their joint practice with the Dolphins last Friday, rather than in their first preseason game, in the name of getting more reps.
“Last week and really all through camp, I’ve been pretty consistent with the thought of reps, reps, reps are the most important thing to get Caleb up to speed,” Johnson said. “By the plan that we had a week ago, we were able to get him probably somewhere between 80 and 100 more reps than we would’ve been able to do, had he played in the game.
“This week it’s a different schedule, different length of time in terms of in between games and all that. Our plan right now is the guys that sat out last week, they will be playing this week.”
With more reps, they have more opportunities to work on weak links in the chain.
Williams and the first-team offense have struggled at times with pre-snap execution during training camp. It’s a problem that Johnson has intentionally challenged his offense with as the preseason has played out.
He also said that when it comes to pre-snap execution, it’s not all on his quarterback.
“I would say it’s not just him. We had some procedure issues in the game the other day as well. I don’t think we’ve hit it from the beginning in terms of how much we’re loading guys down,” Johnson said. “Some of the play calls are a little bit longer than others … We’ve challenged him. It’s been a lot, that was by design.
“If we struggle at all in the huddle, getting the play out, then yeah, the delays are going to pop up and that’s a little bit of part of the learning process and us growing. But, by design, we’ve made this very challenging and hard. We know what we need to do as a staff to alleviate some of that pressure. I think Week 1 we’re going to be in a good spot.”
As for what all of this means when it comes to specifically how much Williams will play Sunday against Buffalo, Johnson was mum on how long he’ll be keeping his first-string QB in. He said he needs to see how the week plays out before making any concrete decisions.
“To be determined. We’ll talk about that. We’ll see how the joint practice goes and reassess there,” Johnson said. “There are things that you have in the back of your head when you make the plan for training camp. As you go through training camp, things change. And that’s what we do. We adjust. We like to say upstairs no one adjusts better than us.
“I think our players understand that. That’s just what we do as coaches—we flow, we get the numbers from sports science, whatever we need to do, what’s best for the team, what’s best for each individual player. That’s how we determine that.”