Going into last season, there was a lot of talk about improving Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams’ completion percentage. As a rookie in 2024, it was 62.5 percent but dropped to 58.1 percent in 2025.
While accuracy is a point of improvement for Williams, his completion percentage does not tell the full story. The Bears had the fifth-most drops of any team with 29. This problem was not concentrated with one or two players. While rookie running back Kyle Monangai led Chicago in drops with six, there were a total of 10 players with at least one dropped pass.
Regardless of the drops, head coach Ben Johnson has been working with Williams on his accuracy throughout training camp. Johnson believes things are trending in the right direction and Williams is still making those aggressive plays to push the ball downfield.
“It’s trending upward, and that’s really what we want to see is it continue to get better," Johnson said. "I just told him this morning, I thought the last two days, even though it was an abbreviated practice yesterday, they were really good. Redzone was a big emphasis for us last year. We got a few good reps of that yesterday. I think he’s shown significant strides there. He’s taken a lot of pride in where he’s put the ball throughout practice. You see it early on in our warm-up periods to routes on air, and it’s translated over the team periods as well.
"Yet, he still hasn’t lost that stinger of being aggressive and trying to push the limits a little bit. I think that’s healthy, particularly in practice, just seeing how tight a window we can fit these things into. And there’s a good, delicate balance. And we’re doing our normal player day off meetings and able to assess what we previously could not take. That’s where a day like yesterday was so good because there’s a few things that we talked about the last player day off that showed up yesterday that gets you excited to coach. So, he’s making significant strides each and every day."
Williams made his preseason debut against the Cincinnati Bengals, where he completed 2-of-5 passes for 28 yards with a completion percentage of 40%. Granted, that's a small sample size and there were two completions left on the table with miscommunication on a connection to Colston Loveland and a couple of penalties. Still, Johnson has said that 70% remains the goal for Williams' completion percentage every season.
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This article originally appeared on Bears Wire: Ben Johnson on Bears QB Caleb Williams' improved accuracy this summer
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