The faulty logic behind replacing Justin Fields with Caleb Williams

2. The argument for Caleb Williams

Let's start off with these stats, Caleb Williams fumbled 33 times during his 31 starts. He had 6 fumbles in 2022 then 16 fumbles during 2023. Against Notre Dame last season, Caleb had 6 sacks and 3 interceptions. In 2022, Caleb played, brilliantly, leading to the label of next generational QB talent.

Then we fast forward to 2023 where his play regressed in the last half of the season, starting with the 48-20 loss against Notre Dame. Williams' regression was most notable in his turnovers. The way he holds the ball away from his body especially when he is running around in off-schedule mode is just asking for a defender to knock the ball out of his hands.

Former Jets scout, Daniel Kelly, in his scouting report, gives a pretty big thumbs down to Williams while also acknowledging his considerable skill set. Kelly makes quite a cogent point about Caleb with a quote from his old boss Bill Parcells, "If a player is not getting better, he is getting worse." Hard to argue with this insight. What I believe Bill Parcells is alluding to is that if players form bad habits, then they need to take time to unlearn them and there is no guarantee that they will unlearn these bad habits. This begs the question of just how coachable is Williams. Given his penchant for abandoning the play call to improvise is some pretty solid evidence of potential coachability issues with this young QB.

This quote also brings to the surface a big question the Bears organization needs to figure out when choosing between Justin Fields or Caleb Williams.

In the second half of 2023, Fields got a lot better in the areas he needed to improve on against NFL competition. Conversely, Williams' play regressed against college competition. This leads me to conclude that those who fell in love with Caleb Williams in 2022 are unwilling to apply this big-picture Bill Parcells perspective.