Chicago Bears
Hall of Famer
Caleb Williams Week 17 QB Grade: Bears @ 49ers
Source: https://www.windycitygridiron.com/x...5/caleb-williams-week-17-qb-grade-bears-49ers
Note: Due to unforeseen New Years plans, play reviews won’t be done this week. I will be doing a deep dive into play reviews next week to make up for the lack of them the last two weeks!
First and foremost: Happy New Years to all of you Windy City Gridiron faithful! I hope 2026 brings you all the happiness and blessings you deserve!
I don’t think any Bears loss has made me feel as inspired as the loss we had on Sunday Night Football against the San Francisco 49ers last week.
That’s a weird thing to say, thinking about it, but bear with me.
There have been many Bears games in the past where our defense just wasn’t on it’s A game, and the opposing teams’ offense boat races us. Take for example the 2014 Chicago Bears. After suffering a crushing 51-23 loss to the Tom Brady led New England Patriots, the Bears, coming out of a bye week, gave up an astounding 55 to rival Green Bay, a game in which the Packers went into halftime with a 42-0 lead.
While this is an example taken from perhaps the worst Bears defense ever fielded, there’s some parallels. We were a respectable to good offense during the Trestman era, (perhaps more so in 2013) the Bears defense struggled to stop teams from scoring, and in my cases that offense could not keep up.
On Sunday night that wasn’t the case.
Each time the 49ers swung, we swung back, even taking a late lead with a 29-yard Cairo Santos field goal. It came down to the final play, but the Bears would fall short to the 49ers 38-42, on a disjointed play due in part to the play call coming in late.
The Bears offense went blow for blow, on the road, in a playoff atmosphere, against a premiere NFC opponent, and it came down to the last play. And a lot of that is due in part to Bears quarterback Caleb Williams.
Williams shined on primetime, completing 25 of 42 passes for 330 yards, 2 touchdowns and a 100.3 Passer Rating (125.7 TPR). He was absolute money when his team was behind all night, and he connected on deep balls over and over again, hitting on all 4 of his deep attempts for 130 yards, 2 touchdown and a perfect 158.3 Passer Rating (for a little fun, that’s a 608.8 on the TPR model!)
And this isn’t just a one off thing, if you’ve been following the series you know he’s been steadily playing his best football of his career, in fact his numbers over the last 10 weeks are stellar, and some of his season long numbers have been incredible too.
A big play quarterback, with elite level sack avoidance and mobility, who also refuses to turn the ball over is a rare blend of quarterback that us Bears fans have never seen under center.
So often when it came to prime time I always had extreme levels of Bears related anxiety when it comes to how our quarterback plays. But in 5 prime time games this season, Williams completed 99/176 passes for 1,196 yards, 7 touchdowns and just 1 interception.
I’m so excited to say this, but I’m ready to: We’ve found a franchise quarterback, and it’s going to be a very fun decade of Bears football.
Benchmarks
(Totals and averages are all before week 17: Season totals are underlined, Season averages in Italics)
C/A: 285/493 (57.8%) | 19/32.9 (57.8%) | 25/42 (59.5%)
Yards: 3400 | 226.7 | 330
Touchdowns: 27 | 1.8 | 2
Turnovers: 7 | 0.5 | 0
QB at Fault Sacks: 13 | 0.9 | 0
aDOT: 9.1 | 7.8
Passer Rating: 89.8 | 100.3
True Passer Rating: 126.0 | 125.7
Time to Throw: 3.03s | 2.95s
Time to Pressure: 2.64s | 3.11s
Pressure Rate: 32.17% | 17.39%
On-Target Rate: 66.2% | 76.5%
Poor Play Rate / Big Play Rate: 9.6% PPR / 7.7% BPR | 2.1% PPR / 10.4% BRP
Game Scorecard
The full grading sheet for each play can be found here.
Game Notes
- NFL Passer Rating / True Passer Rating / PFF Grade: 100.3 / 125.7 / 71.8
- The average passer rating in the 2025 season sits at 92.3 through week 17. His 100.3 NFL Passer Rating would be considered a good game.
- A 125.7 TPR is a solid Good game boarding on great, with 100 serving as the baseline for “Average.”
- On the PFF scale, a score of 70 or higher is considered an Above Average game. With a 71.8, Caleb Williams’ performance was graded as a lower end Above Average game.
- PFF’s score is honestly underselling his performance this week, in my opinion. I pointed it out in a tweet earlier this week where Bo Nix was graded higher on the week than Williams, despite a much less impressive performance.
- On-Target Throws: Season Average: 66.2% | Week 17 vs. 49ers: 76.5%
- Reminder: Completion % ≠ On-Target %. On-target throws are only counted on aimed passes, so throw aways, spikes, and deflections at the line aren’t counted. And drops are counted as on-target.
- Short-Level Passing (Behind LOS – 9 yards): 21/26 | 80.8% On-Target
- Deep-Level Passing (10–20+ yards): 5/8 | 62.5% On-Target
- His On-Target throwing has improved leaps and bounds. In the first 6 weeks of the season he was sitting at just 59.1%, but over the last 10 weeks his On-Target % is at 71.0%, with each and every one of those 10 games being above his season average On-Target rate. Very obvious and quantifiable growth!
- 2.1% Poor Play Rate (turnover-worthy + poorly graded plays) against a 10.4% Big Play Rate (great + elite graded plays)
- I keep repeating myself here, but this is another week of positive trending when it comes to being under his season mark of PPR and being over his season mark on BPR.
- How about that free play touchdown to Colston Loveland? It’s intangibles like that, that make me excited over the future of this kid.
- Over the last 3 weeks his big play rate has exploded, sitting at 8.6%, which is nearly double his season mark of 4.8%.
- Time to Throw: We saw a good mix of play-action and pocket passing this week, once again, putting his time to throw charted by me at 2.95 seconds.
- Per PFF his time to throw out of play-action last week was 3.75 seconds
- No play-action time to throw sat at 3.03 seconds.
- Iceman Cometh: The Bears spent a good portion of the game trailing, but Caleb Williams didn’t miss a beat, throwing for 257-yards, 2 touchdowns, and an adjusted 75.0% completion %. Just more proof that when the game is in peril, QB1 delivers.
Summary
His final scores in week 17 of 1st Half (1.05) / 2nd Half (3.95) / Game (5.00) give him another solid “Good” game grade on the season. His 4th game of the season with a “Good” or better grade, he also only has 3 games all season that graded below the score of “Average” (Week 1 vs. MIN, Week 6 @ WAS, Week 12 vs. PIT.) Of the 7 quarterbacks I grade, only Drake Maye has had more Good or better games (7).
Of the seven quarterbacks I grade (with the slight caveat of 3 of those quarterbacks are injured) Williams placed 1st this week, as he continues an extremely impressive back-end performance to the 2025 season.
Weekly scores of every QB I grade can be found here.
The Bears come back home for the final week of a the 2025 NFL regular season. Crazy to think this season has flown by as fast as it has. The Bears have a few things on the line, a win would lock up the #2 seed in the playoff’s ensuring 2 playoff home games (if they handle business in the wildcard round.) Caleb Williams is also 109 yards away from breaking the Chicago Bears single season passing yardage record held by Erik Kramer, and is 270 yards away from being the franchises first 4,000 yard passer. I predict that he will, in fact, do just that against the Lions at home.
As always, Bear Down, and we will see you back here next week!
Gary Baugher Jr. is a rookie contributor to WCG, bringing football insight backed by over 16 years of experience in organized football and more than 30 years as a passionate fan of the game. You can follow him on Twitter at @iamcogs.
Source: https://www.windycitygridiron.com/x...5/caleb-williams-week-17-qb-grade-bears-49ers