Chicago Bears' first overall pick Caleb Williams saw nearly two quarters of play on Saturday against the Cincinnati Bengals, his second game of preseason action.
Things weren't all sunshine and rainbows for the team's new franchise quarterback, but what really matters is how things ended.
After starting the game with three straight drives that ended after three offensive plays filled with drops and missed blocks, Williams got the offense back on track .
The final two drives Williams led with the rest of the starting offense ended with points on the board. One by a Cairo Santos field goal, and one ending with a seven-yard touchdown run by Williams, the first score of his NFL career.
Williams' final stat line: 6-for-13 passing for 75 yards and the touchdown run.
"I thought Caleb did today, it was really well," Bears head coach Matt Eberflus said after the game. "He had a nice professional day quarterbacking. So, it's not always going to be rosy, you know, you're not going to make all your completions and make these big chunk places to start out. I saw operation that was good before the snap, in and out of the huddle, communicating and cadence was good. I thought his flow of the game was really nice. I also thought that his disposition when he had a little adversity on the sideline was excellent...
Him working with the players, body language, demeanor never changed. He was always in there referring to the next one... It was a good day, lot of learning. We'll look at the tape, and we'll get better from this."
Williams' best play of the evening was a deep shot to fellow first round pick Rome Odunze. Williams evaded the pressure, rolled out to his left, and roped an off platform throw 45-yards down the field, right in Odunze's hands.
"It's something that I've worked on in practice," Williams said after the game. " Watching Aaron Rodgers and all his dimes in these past 19-20 years. I mean, he can do unbelievable things, right, left, running straight, running left, all these other things. So, just just practicing it over time, perfecting it. There's gonna be times where I don't put exactly where I want to but today worked out. Rome ran a great route and then made a marvelous catch, a wonderful catch. I tried to just give him a shot."
While the play itself was spectacular from the team's top two draft picks, the confidence to make the throw itself after having such a rough start to the game is what's really telling about Williams' mindset.
"It's pretty unreal, honestly. I just watched it back. He's throwing off one leg, putting it on my outside shoulder. It's like ... ooh. It's magical what he's doing back there in the backfield," Odunze explained after the game. "He's special."
With one more preseason game left to be played until the Bears square off with the Tennessee Titans in the regular season opener, perhaps we've seen all we're going to see out of Williams in the preseason . If that's the case, he'll end his rookie preseason with 190 total yards and one touchdown on seven total drives. If this is actually it for the preseason, everyone has seemingly come away impressed from the rookie.
"He always rises to the challenge," Eberflus added. "We'll challenge him again this week to improve on basically everything of quarterbacking that he needs to and he's done that. He's done a really good job with that. And so we'll just look at it like that."
Related: Bears vs. Bengals First Half Takeaways: Kyler Gordon dominates in his return, Caleb Williams scores his first NFL touchdown
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