HOUSTON — The Houston Texans came from all sides. All angles, all speed, all converging for a town hall meeting about Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams.
By the time it was over, the Bears’ first overall draft pick had been sacked seven times, which is more than any quarterback in a game this young season. According to the league’s Next Generation Stats, Williams was targeted 20 times in passing situations and pressured 36 times on 37 back-to-back passes — the latter statistic sounding like the Texans were lining up for every play in their SUVs.
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 have an easy fix. All that… and pain.
“A little bruised up,” Williams said afterward, when asked about the punishment she took in the loss. “You know, I took a couple of hits today. I’m going to get in the ice tub and do everything I need to do to make sure my body is ready for tomorrow, the other days’ practice and obviously the next game.”
For the Bears, it’s a worrying turning point early in the season. Maybe not a moment of panic after just two games, but it’s certainly a sign that something may have to fundamentally change in the scheme to try to fix some very real protection issues. They can get away with some of it against a struggling Tennessee Titans team that also The Bears beat Chicago in Week 1, but they won’t get away with it against a franchise like the Texans, which is built with the kind of architecture the Bears are looking for: 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 cast of high-level skill-position players that could go toe-to-toe with any other offense in the league.
There are some fundamental underlying differences for the Texans. They have an offensive line that has been morphing into a presentable unit over time, and a running game that saw a key investment made in the offseason with the acquisition of Joe Mixon and Cam Akers along with Dameon Pierce. That trio is poised to form a respectable running back rotation when all three players are finally healthy.
The Texans’ intent was clear heading into this season. Even after quarterback C.J. Stroud had a historically well-polished rookie season, the franchise wasn’t going to bank on him becoming a 40-plus pass-attempt-per-game player. Instead, offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik was going to map out a scheme to strike the kind of balance that would help his offensive line keep Stroud protected. That’s why you saw Houston split 36 rushing attempts between running backs and wide receivers in Week 1. It’s a formula that was the intention against the Bears, too, before Mixon was knocked out of the game by a hip-drop tackle early in the third quarter.
Even with Mixon’s leg injury, Sunday night should resonate with the Bears. What the Texans have done for Stroud, the Bears must do for Williams. Starting with the offensive line that already looks overwhelmed to the point of being compared to the units that often left Justin Fields crushed in recent seasons. To the point that Williams was pressured multiple times from every position on his line. From left tackle to right tackle and everything in between. And a couple of times, from the tight end spot.
This produced an offensive flow that never looked settled or accurate, with Williams throwing multiple passes over his receivers’ heads or throwing reckless passes while running, some of them hinting at the out-of-structure chaos that worried some talent evaluators heading into the 2024 NFL Draft. But if you want Williams to operate in structure, you have to provide him with structure that he can rely on. That’s not what happened against the Texans, and it’s why he’s coming out of the second week of the regular season without a touchdown scored thus far, and a pair of passing performances that are nothing short of ugly.
“If you look at it, obviously we have seven sacks on the offensive line, everybody’s going to talk about that type of stuff,” Bears head coach Matt Eberflus said. “I think protection is for everybody. Protection is for the tight ends, the running backs, the offensive line, the quarterback. Everyone involved… In terms of running the ball, obviously we want to run the ball better than we did. It was good, but not good enough. We’ve got to establish the running game. I think that’s always a good friend to a young quarterback when you can do that.”
There’s no doubt that new coordinator Shane Waldron is going to be under pressure, as his play-calling has produced 353 yards of offense through two games, with one of the worst running games in the league. That’s the opposite of what Waldron was supposed to bring after his two-year stint as the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator, when he helped balance the scheme between run and pass. His job in Chicago was expected to be the opposite, moving the Bears away from a run-based offense and balancing it with Williams’ ability to inject a high-octane passer into the middle of the scheme. The result has been a disaster, and it was on full display against the Texans.
Though Waldron’s hand in the scheme will draw attention, it won’t be enough to draw attention away from the offensive line, which was repeatedly crushed by the Texans in multiple ways. The culmination of that came late in the 4th quarter, on a drive that could have seen the Bears eke out a comeback win. Moving forward with momentum and facing a second down and 10 yards at their own 48-yard line, Bears right tackle Darnell Wright (who also struggled with penalties) horribly missed defensive end Danielle Hunter, who annihilated Williams for an 8-yard loss that the quarterback never saw coming. It effectively ended the game, sucking up all of Chicago’s momentum and leaving the Bears to offer up two more plays that resulted in a 1-yard run by Williams and a badly missed incomplete pass that was thrown a full zip code to rookie wide receiver Rome Odunze.
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These kinds of offensive line issues can rarely be fixed in one season unless you can devise protection packages that move the quarterback and take pressure off his line, or you can put together a running game that allows blockers to assert themselves and find some chemistry. Time will tell if the Bears can do either. But the goal and the measure should be clear now. They have some hallmarks of what the Texans have become. They now know how far behind they are in construction. That was part of the message Stroud conveyed to 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 help you in the long run,” Stroud said. “Don’t let your head down. Don’t let the tough times get you down. It’s not going to be easy. You were picked No. 1 for a reason.”
Stroud was talking about Williams’ talent. He could easily have been talking about the previous failures of the last quarterback who generated high hopes and led to Williams’ selection in the draft. After the Texans blew Williams out of the water on Sunday, those failures of Justin Fields and some of the problems that caused them appear to be closer than anyone imagined.