The Chicago Bears are all the buzz surrounding the NFL coming out of Week 1 of the 2026 season. Of course, the Bears were one of the biggest surprises in 2025 as well and returned a second-year wunderkind head coach in Ben Johnson and a quarterback in Caleb Williams that many view as a potential superstar in the future.
Week 1 didn't do anything to put out those flames and quiet the noise. The Bears hung 59 points on the Carolina Panthers in a blowout win to get to 1-0 on the season, and the best of both Williams and Johnson was on display all afternoon. Johnson's run game, the signature of his great offenses with the Detroit Lions and now the Bears, ran for nearly 300 yards on more than seven yards per carry.
Williams showed the best of both worlds, both in terms of the incredible physical traits that he has showed since he was in college, but also the timing and the maturity that he has learned since Johnson became his head coach. He scored four touchdowns, two on the ground and two through the air, showing off his breathtaking scrambling ability while also flashing incredible accuracy and arm talent.
That performance has stirred up some MVP buzz for Williams, and perhaps he deserves it. But the Panthers have plenty of holes to patch up on the defensive side of the ball, and a much stiffer test awaits Chicago on Sunday when it takes on Brian Flores and the Minnesota Vikings.
Vikings will heat Williams up
If you've been following the NFL for any number of years now, you know that Brian Flores loves to blitz. That was never more apparent than it was on Sunday, when he blitzed Jordan Love an astonishing 78.3% of the time. No other team was even at 50% in Week 1.
Love and company had some success early on in the game, but the Packers' offensive line broke down in the second half of the Vikings' 39-22 comeback win.
Ironically, Williams was blitzed at the second-highest rate among all qualified quarterbacks in Week 1 according to Next Gen Stats. He torched the blitz when Carolina came after him, finishing the game 9-of-14 with 142 yards and two touchdowns, amounting to a sparkling +0.44 EPA per dropback. His total EPA against the blitz in Week 1 was third in the NFL, behind just Lamar Jackson and CJ Stroud.
As a rookie in 2024, Williams was dreadful against the blitz. His -0.18 EPA per dropback was good for 28th in the NFL, and he took 29 sacks on 93 pressures on those plays. By the end of the year, when Chicago was rotating through play-callers, opposing defenses could use the blitz as a crutch of some sorts. Williams faced the most blitzed dropbacks in the entire NFL during his rookie season.
In 2025, his first under Johnson, Williams completely turned those numbers around. Once again, Williams led the league in blitzed dropbacks, but his efficiency and productivity on those plays completely turned around. He finished the year with a +0.20 EPA per dropback, good for sixth in the NFL. While Williams completed just 54.8% of his passes against the blitz in 2025, but he took just eight sacks against the blitz all season and threw 17 touchdowns to three interceptions.
The biggest thing that changed for Williams against the blitz, outside of his sack avoidance, was his willingness to punish defenses for blitzing by pushing the ball down the field. His average depth of target against the blitz in 2024 was 8.6 yards, and that jumped up to 9.4 yards in 2025. In Week 1 against Carolina, that number was up to 12.8 yards per attempt.
Can he punish the Vikings' defense and all of their exotic blitzes and coverages in the same way? The answer could go a long way toward deciding a winner.
Williams may have to shoulder a bigger burden
Of course, a running game is a quarterback's best friend. The Bears have one of, if not the best, running game in football, and that was on full display in Week 1. However, it will be a much stiffer test against the Vikings, who will be a more stout unit against the run than Carolina was.
The Vikings led the entire NFL in Week 1, allowing -0.47 EPA per rush against the Packers. Green Bay was only able to get two runs of 10 or more yards; by comparison, the Bears had five of those against the Panthers. Minnesota allowed just 3.1 yards per carry against the Packers, so the Bears have their work cut out for them.
Of course, if the Bears do struggle to run the ball on early downs, that will make Williams' job much more difficult. On third down passes against the Packers, the Vikings' blitz rate soared up above 80% and they allowed a dreadful -0.87 EPA per dropback, while Jordan Love's time to throw sank below two seconds.
Williams has gotten much better at getting the ball out on time, but he doesn't want to have to do that because Flores is rushing him in obvious passing situations. However, if the Vikings are able to force this third-and-long situations, we will find out quickly just how much Williams has grown coming into year three.
On top of that, Flores' defenses are some of the toughest in the league to play before the snap. Williams has shouldered a large pre-snap responsibility ever since he entered the league as a rookie and has played against Flores' defenses a number of times now, but this will be another stern test of just how far he has come in that department.