Heading into his third season, the No. 1 goal is clear for Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams. Head coach Ben Johnson's desire for him to complete 70 percent of his passes remains a tough goal, but he has a ton of room to improve his accuracy.
Some of that improvement in completion percentage will come via taking simpler, shorter passes when they're open and playing less "hero ball." As former NFL coach Bruce Arians once said, and it's a lesson all quarterbacks have to learn, "you can't go broke taking a profit."
Another piece of boosting Williams' completion rate will come from something he has less control over. According to Pro Football Focus, Bears' pass catchers had 34 drops last season (third-most in the league).
As a result, PFF had Williams' adjusted completion percentage at 69.4 percent. Next Gen Stats came in lower, with an expected completion rate of 65 percent. Still, noticeably better than his actual completion percentage of 58.1 percent.
Another stat removes some blame from Caleb Williams for his accuracy issues
According to Warren Sharp of Sharp Football Analysis, the Bears had the sixth-highest percentage of pass attempts that were incomplete due to receiver error last season. That presumably extends beyond drops to deeper analysis that was done to reveal improper routes, etc.
Williams' league-high 44 throwaways, according to PFF, could layer into that receiver error equation somewhere.
If someone wasn't where they were supposed to be, or perceived not to be where they were supposed to be, on a hot route when a blitz was coming, as an example, he may have effectively given up on a play. Those go in the books as an incompletion and a throwaway as deemed by analytics, but it's not a drop by the receiver or strictly, subjectively, deemed to be an off-target throw by the quarterback.
The stickiest part of the stat Sharp offered is this. The Jacksonville Jaguars and the Denver Broncos, the two teams with the most drops in the league last season, were also the top two in rate of incompletions in the more encompassing category of receiver error. A broader correlation that isn't the quarterback's fault is there, beyond the Bears.
Ultimately, as he eyes taking another big step this season, it's on Williams to be a more consistently accurate passer. Some of last season's drops would likely fall away then, as would some of the other, not-drop-related errors made by Bears' receivers.
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The idea that sharper play from said receivers would be very helpful stands, though, and we have another piece of evidence to show it.
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