Up-and-down Caleb Williams needs to have a big Week 3 vs. Cowboys, and why he might be able to do it

It's been a rough start to the season for the Chicago Bears. They jumped out to an early lead against the division rival Minnesota Vikings in Week 1, but they played a disastrous fourth quarter and blew the game. In Week 2, they were blown off the field and outclassed by the division rival Detroit Lions. After coming into the season with high hopes for a playoff run, they're 0-2 and need to start stacking wins fast, lest they fall too far behind.

Luckily for them, they're about to face what looks like one of the friendliest defenses in the NFL. The Bears are set to host the Dallas Cowboys in Week 3, and the Cowboys are fresh off allowing Russell Wilson -- yes, Russell Wilson -- to complete 30 of 41 passes for 450 yards, three touchdowns and an interception. Their pass rush is depleted without Micah Parsons. Their secondary is down DaRon Bland and Shavon Revel due to injuries, and both Trevon Diggs and Kaiir Elam looked highly flammable last week against New York.

The matchup provides an opportunity for Caleb Williams to put together his best performance of the young season. There's already a narrative crystallizing that the second-year quarterback has been really bad so far this year, and he has a chance to change that narrative this coming Sunday. But the narrative also isn't necessarily wholly accurate in the first place.

Have there been some bad decisions and bad misses? Absolutely. Just take a look at these two throws last week against the Lions. 

He's rolling to his right on both throws, and both of them should probably just be put out of bounds. But on the first one he doesn't get enough arm on the ball to sail it into the bench and it instead results in an interception, and on the second he throws back across his body and essentially into quintuple coverage trying to get the ball to Rome Odunze. In fairness to him, the ball somehow hits Odunze in both hands. But it's just not a smart play and has far more of a chance to turn into something bad, than something good. 

He's also missed some easy stuff, including a potential touchdown to DJ Moore in Week 1 on what looked like a miscommunication between the quarterback and the receiver. 

Moore takes the route up the field and Williams throws the ball to the corner. One of these guys is in the wrong (I personally think it's Moore, given the location of the defenders), but even the throw to the corner looks like it might have taken Moore out of bounds if he'd been in that spot.

That's also a deep shot, and that type of thing can happen. What shouldn't happen is being inaccurate on throws to the short and intermediate areas of the field, which Williams has been too often. He's been charted by TruMedia with 12 "inaccurate" throws so far this season, the second-most in the league. Those 12 throws also make up 18.5% of his total, and his off-target throw rate ranks third-worst out of 34 qualified quarterbacks.

It's stuff like this, plus a continued propensity to hold the ball too long and take bad sacks (he has the second-highest average time to throw in the NFL, per TruMedia, and the league's 10th-highest sack rate), that has Williams checking in 22nd out of that group of 34 players in EPA per dropback and 32nd in passing success rate. Put simply, that's not nearly good enough.

But that's not to say he hasn't put good stuff on film. He's ripped some really high level throws so far this season, including and especially against the Lions last week. It just got overshadowed by the fact that the Bears got destroyed because they gave up 52 points.

He's also made some really nice plays on the move this year, both as a passer and especially as a scrambler. 

He's taken a long time to throw too often, but he also ranks 10th in EPA per dropback on throws more than 2.5 seconds after the snap, going 25 of 42 for 338 yards, two touchdowns and one interception (the terrible pick above). And he's averaging 9.6 yards per scramble, turning some pretty bad situations into positive plays by evading pressure and taking off down the field.

This is the type of stuff that convinced the Bears to take him with the No. 1 overall pick in last year's draft. Arm strength and decisiveness to fit the ball into tight windows, and the playmaking ability to turn nothing into something both inside and outside the structure of the offense. This is what the Bears want to see all the time. 

And again, Williams has an opportunity to put some really good tape together this week against the Cowboys. They have played zone on an incredible 87.4% of opponent dropbacks so far this season, per TruMedia, making them the single-most predictable defense in the league to date. Chicago's former head coach, Matt Eberflus, is Dallas' defensive coordinator, and his teams have consistently played zone at one of the highest rates in the NFL. They were at 63.6% when he was the defensive coordinator with the Colts and 71.8% during his time with the Bears. He's only been getting more and more predictable.

Williams has also been better against zone defenses so far this season and so far in his career. His EPA per dropback is eight times worse vs. man coverage than it is against zone, and he's completed 67% of his passes vs. zone compared with just 50.9% vs. man. 

Perhaps the Cowboys come out and change things up significantly in this game to play to Williams' weaknesses, but they really don't have the corners to play man right now given Diggs' diminished state (he's coming off a major injury), Elam's ineffectiveness and the absences of both Bland and Revel. They kind of have to play zone. 

That gives Williams a chance to put together a nice performance on Sunday. A performance he and the Bears both really need, because they're already in danger of seeing this season slip away from them.