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How the Bears Fooled the Packers On Caleb Williams' Game-Winning Pass
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- How the Bears Fooled the Packers On Caleb Williams' Game-Winning Pass
The best play-callers on either side of the ball come to the game with all kinds of options in their playbooks. Because at any level of football, if you're too predictable, you're dead before you begin. Even the most talented teams need schematic variety to amplify the gifts of the guys on the field.
Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson justifiably earned his reputation as one of the NFL 's best offensive minds during his time from 2022-24 as the Detroit Lions ' offensive coordinator. It was the primary reason that Johnson had been among the most coveted head coaching candidates long before he accepted the Bears' offer on January 21, 2025.
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The 2024 Bears were operating in a sea of dysfunction. They had two head coaches (Matt Eberflus and Thomas Brown), three offensive coordinators (Shane Waldron, Brown, and Chris Beatty), and none of those guys could help Williams, the first overall pick in the 2024 draft, get his sea legs at the NFL level. Maybe having somebody watch tape with him would have helped .
In any event, what Johnson has done for Williams deserves its own article, and it's certainly something we'll write as the 11-4 Bears (who finished the 2024 season at 5-12) inch closer to the postseason. Saturday night's 22-16 overtime win over the Green Bay Packers put the new Bears atop the NFC North, and pushed them from the NFC's seven-seed to the two-seed, behind only the Seattle Seahawks .
One of the most important things that Johnson has done for Williams is to give him so many different sub-structures in his playbook that allow the quarterback to play with confidence and efficiency. No quarterback, no matter how talented, will be as effective if his coaches are not presenting schematic advantages. The 101 level of that is to design route concepts that present free openings. The 201 level is when you combine that with personnel and alignment looks that have defenses thinking one thing when you're ready to do another.
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What Johnson did to set up Williams for success on his 46-yard touchdown pass to receiver DJ Moore with 4:57 left in overtime was grad-school stuff, because the Packers were presented with something they had no right to expect... even though they'd seen it before.
On the play, the Bears lined up with three tight ends on the field — 13 personnel — with Colston Loveland , Cole Kmet , and Durham Smythe as the tight ends. On the season, Williams had attempted a grand total of two passes of 20 air yards with three tight ends on the field, and the only completion before Week 16 was his 28-yard touchdown pass to Kmet against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 13. This was the dagger in Chicago's 24-15 win.
On the game-winner to Moore, the Bears had their three tight ends deployed thusly: Loveland and Kmet in wing alignments to either side, and Smythe as a fullback in the backfield. They had shown this specific alignment to the Packers once before — on running back Kyle Monangai 's 13-yard gain with 6:37 left in the third quarter. The Bears were backed up at their own 2-yard line, so this was just about getting out of the paint.
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Now, fast-forward to that last play in overtime. On the two plays before this, Chicago had run the ball out of 11 and then 12 personnel, with a seven-yard D'Andre Swift run, and an 11-yard Monangai gain, as the results.
And this was where Johnson showed the Packers exactly what they had seen on that earlier Monangai gain. Not only were Loveland and Kmet the wing tight ends again, but Kmet even motioned from left to right to get there, just as he had before. The Packers responded with Cover-0 — man across the board with no deep safeties; they were reading run all the way. On both plays, Moore was aligned outside right in a reduced split as the only receiver. Before, Moore had blocked for Monangai out of that look.
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This time, he had something else in mind.
While Packers linebackers Edgerrin Cooper and Quay Walker bit hard on the run fake, and safeties Xavier McKinney and Javon Bullard also cheated forward to provide what they thought would be run support, Moore had cornerback Keisean Nixon and nobody else to deal with on his deep over route. There was no help up top. Williams' throw was amazing, and Moore did a beautiful job bringing the ball in with Nixon hanging all over him, but this was just as much about how Johnson baited the Packers into one look, while giving something that was as different as possible from what they'd seen before.
"The final play? Yeah, that was one that we put in and we ran in practice on Thursday, and it almost looked identical to that," Johnson said postgame. "I thought Caleb threw a dime in practice, and DJ came down with it, and we're hopeful that it may or may not be there, but we timed that one up right. DJ ran a great route, and Caleb threw him a great ball. I think it's also a testament to our preparation over the course of the week. I think the coaches do a great job coming up with good ideas to put our guys in good spots and when you go out and you execute it on the practice field, it does become game-day reality for us."
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Preparation was an obvious part of the win, and it gave Williams the confidence he needed to uncork that heater with the game on the line. Clearly, the confidence was there even before Moore caught the ball.
"I knew it was good," Williams said. "You got that belief, you got that confidence, you got that swagger as an offense, you practice well, you hit plays like that in practice. It was pretty identical to practice and when the play gets called and the moment comes up like that, it's time to go hit it, it's time to go in the game.
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"That play went in this week, and I was up watching film in [Johnson's] office, and we just kind of went over small details throughout the play. The next day, we came out and discussed it and hit it in practice, and it ended up working out just how we thought."
Which is what can happen when coach and quarterback are supremely aligned on not only the right play call for a given situation, but how a play that happened about an hour before can set a defense up for failure.
This story was originally published by Athlon Sports on Dec 21, 2025, where it first appeared in the NFL section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
