Caleb Williams may not be the man to blame for his second intentional grounding penalty in the 30-16 loss against the Baltimore Ravens.
It was a bad play in a big moment-- the Bears were trying to score points before halftime, and the flag both knocked the team out of field goal range and forced head coach Ben Johnson to burn his final timeout-- and Williams was shredded for it.
"There's just going to be nobody in the area that you can justifiable say that he was throwing to," said J.J. Watt on the CBS broadcast. "I mean, he was clearly just getting the ball out of his hands."
As you can imagine, folks on social media weren't quite so generous with their language.
What Williams had to say about the play when speaking with the media
After the game, however, Williams added some insights for what he thought was going to be a pass to rookie tight end Colston Loveland, and that insight changes the context entirely.
"It was a choice route," Williams said. "He has a couple different options: to break in, sit or break out."
Williams thought Loveland was going to break out, so he threw the ball toward the sideline. Loveland decided to break in.
"Just wasn't on the same page," Williams said. "That comes with reps."
If Loveland had broken out instead of in, at worst, it would have been a simple incomplete pass. The next play would have been third-and-five from the Ravens' 39-yard line, and the Bears would have had a wide-open playbook to convert the first down with a timeout still in hand. At best, it could've been a first down and another example of an impressive ball from Williams thrown with anticipation, in the rhythm of the offense.
Instead, the Bears faced a third-and-15 from the Ravens' 49-yard line with 22 seconds to go and no timeouts.
How quickly things can change.
This doesn't mean Loveland definitively made a mistake on the play. Without knowing the team's rules based on leverage or the situation, we can't say who was in the wrong. It could be that neither Loveland nor Williams made a mistake, and as Williams said, they just haven't built up the rapport to know what the other wants in that scenario.
Read more: Same old Bears mistakes bit them in butt disastrously in loss vs. Ravens
It's a reminder, though, that it can be unfair to judge a perceived mistake hastily, in the moment.