Not long after the Lions were blown out by the Packers in their season opener, a statistic started making its way around social media — without Rams head coach Sean McVay or new Bears head coach Ben Johnson calling plays for him, Lions quarterback Jared Goff was 3-17-1 in his career.
Asked about it after Sunday’s win, Goff coolly brushed the back of his head with his left hand.
“All it takes is one game, huh?” he said.
Goff followed a Week 1 misstep with the best performance of the weekend, throwing for five touchdowns, 334 yards and a 156 passer rating in Sunday’s 52-21 win against the Bears.
Playing for Johnson doesn’t guarantee success, as Bears quarterback Caleb Williams has shown in their first two weeks together. Want proof? Just use the measurements the Bears do.
In March, Johnson declared that expected points added per dropback, and not the turnover battle, was most closely connected with winning. He was right: over the three previous seasons, teams that had a better EPA than their opponent won 77% of the time, while a team with more takeaways won 76% of them.
Williams’ report card in those categories, then, is essential reading. Through two weeks, it’s not good.
Entering Monday night’s games, Williams ranked 24th in the NFL in completion percentage. Among the first-round picks in his rookie class, Williams trails Drake Maye, Bo Nix and Michael Penix but leads Jayden Daniels and J.J. McCarthy.
Williams has completed 61.5% of his passes. He could complete his next 18 in a row and still not have a passer rating of 70.
Williams’ EPA per dropback, which measures how a quarterback’s efficiency affects scoring, puts him in similar company as passer rating. At No. 22, he trails Maye, Penix and Nix and leads Daniels and McCarthy.
At least Williams is healthy. Daniels sprained his knee Thursday and might miss Sunday’s game. McCarthy, the Vikings quarterback who made his NFL debut in Week 1, hurt his ankle Sunday night and will miss a few weeks.
Williams being healthy, though, might be the nicest thing one could say about his season. His performance Sunday in Detroit was more of the same — a few big-time throws weighed down by inconsistency. Against the Vikings, Williams started hot and went cold, completing his first 10 passes and then only nine of his next 21. Against the Lions, Williams got sloppy, whether it was getting stuffed on consecutive sneaks when the Bears needed just one yard or throwing an interception down the right sideline. Williams said it was a miscommunication with Olamide Zaccheaus while he was scrambling, though it was such a bad throw that it looked as though the quarterback might have been trying to simply throw the ball away.
Johnson said he should have done exactly that. Williams bemoaned the team’s lack of consistency — including from the quarterback himself.
“Don’t try to create any explosive plays,” Williams said. “Don’t try to be Superman, and they’ll come.”
Johnson claimed he saw growth in the quarterback Sunday — he liked Williams’ footwork on plays in which he made it to his third or fourth option — but acknowledged it’s still not good enough.
“It’s not perfect yet,” he said Monday. “There’s still a number of plays where our eyes aren’t quite in the right position or we’re holding onto the ball just a tick longer than what we’re coaching.”
Johnson has seen the fruits of his coaching before — and saw it again Sunday. After torching the Bears, Goff moved into first place in the NFL in completion percentage and fourth in EPA per dropback, the two measuring sticks his former coach so values.
