Caleb Williams’ Chicago Bears Close-up: Part 6, Man Vs. Zone

This is the final piece in a 6-part series examining Caleb Williams’ 2025 season.

• In part one, we saw that Caleb Williams was generally an above-average passer during the 2025 season.
• Part two revealed that struggles with accuracy were his largest weakness, but that improved significantly late in the season.
• We saw in part three that Caleb was great at setting up scramble drill situations, but the Bears have to take better advantage of those opportunities.
• Part four found the pass protection was solid in 2025, but questions at C and LT create real concerns about how it will fare in 2026.
• In part five, we saw Caleb generally performed well when blitzed and/or pressured, but accuracy issues limited his overall impact in these situations.

Today, we’re going to wrap up the series by exploring how Caleb did against man and zone coverage.

General Overview

Let’s start with a general look at how Williams performed against man and zone coverage in 2025. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted.

Before we get into the data, a quick caveat: PFF doesn’t publicly show this data by QB, but instead by pass catcher. I manually compiled it to do comparisons, but it doesn’t include all throws. This accounts for a little under 80% of Williams’ total pass attempts (and total pass attempts thrown in the NFL in 2025); it for sure does not include throwaways with no pass target (which PFF says were about 7.5% of Caleb’s throws), and I would imagine also does not include screens and quick hitters where the play developed too quickly to determine the coverage.

With that said, the table below shows how Williams fared throwing against both man and zone compared to the NFL average (I couldn’t do the usual NFL high/medium/low since this wasn’t split up by QB).

(If you can’t view the full figure, click on it to open in a new tab. Sorry about formatting issues.)

A few thoughts:

• The first thing to note is that teams generally play far more zone than man coverage, and so zone performance ends up being more important for overall production. The NFL average is over 70% zone to less than 30% man, and Williams in particular had roughly 3x as many passes against zone coverage as he did man.
• Given that we’ve seen issues with Williams’ accuracy (and therefore completion percentage) throughout the entire series, the first thing that stands out to me is he’s actually fairly close to average completing passes against man coverage. The accuracy discrepancy is much larger in zone. This is directly flipped from what happened in Williams’ rookie season.
  • Without more data, I’m not sure if this is a meaningful data point, small sample size, due to target depth (the air yards/catch here is only for completed passes, not intended passes), or what.
  • I do find it interesting, however, that Williams’ average completed pass was about a yard shorter than the NFL average against man coverage and about a yard farther than the NFL average against zone coverage. This speaks to the types of passes Williams was attempting (or at least completing) against each coverage.
• Williams’ yards/attempt was solid in both of these areas despite generally being lower than average in most places this series, which highlights the impact Caleb’s high rate of throwaways (which are not included in this data) had on his yards/attempt mark overall.
• Unsurprisingly, Williams was excellent at avoiding interceptions against both coverages.

Positional Split – Man

Let’s look now at how Williams did throwing to various positions against both man and zone, starting with man coverage. The table below shows how frequently and effectively Williams threw to running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends when the opposing defense was in man.

A few thoughts:

• In general, WRs are the man-beaters in NFL offenses, as their target share is about 10% higher against man than zone.
  • Caleb targeted all three positions at a league-average rate. This is a huge change from his rookie season, when he was heavily reliant on WRs, and likely speaks to losing high-volume WR Keenan Allen and adding high-volume TE Colston Loveland.
    • DJ Moore (20 targets against man) and Olamide Zacchaeus (16) were 2nd and 3rd, respectively, in targets against man coverage for the 2025 Bears. With their departures, I am guessing we will see more man-beaters go to TEs in 2026.
    • The reason for that is Colston Loveland, who emerged as a real weapon down the stretch of his rookie season. He saw 16 targets, 11 catches, and 121 yards against man coverage on the year, but the majority of that (12 targets, 9 catches, 108 yards) came in the final 7 weeks of the season.
• In terms of efficiency throwing to different positions:
  • Caleb completed passes at an average rate to WRs, but really struggled gaining yards. A breakdown by player, however, illustrates that problem may not be Caleb’s:
    • Rome Odunze: 62% completion, 7.4 yards/attempt
    • DJ Moore: 55% completion, 7.3 yards/attempt
    • Olamide Zacchaeus: 50% completion, 3.6 yards/attempt
    • Luther Burden: 70% completion, 10.7 yards/attempt
    • Olamide Zacchaeus was terrible as a pass catcher last year. He helped in other areas of the offense, but his absence should make Chicago’s passing game better.
  • Caleb had a low completion percentage but extremely high yards/target when passing to RBs. This is likely due to a small sample size, as it constitutes 13 total targets (7 completions), so 1 big play could easily skew the total yardage.
  • Caleb was highly effective throwing to tight ends, and this was true to both Loveland (69% completion, 7.6 yards/attempt) and Cole Kmet (63% completion, 7.9 yards/attempt). Kmet has never been a high-volume weapon against man coverage, but can be dangerous off play action, while Loveland seems poised to take over as a primary man-beater in 2026.

Positional Split – Zone

Let’s shift now to looking at how Williams fared against zone coverage. The table below matches the one for man above but is zone stats.

A few thoughts:

• In general, we see fewer passes going to WRs against zone than man, with most of the increase going to RBs. Caleb follows the lower WR trend, but threw most of those extra passes to TE, targeting RBs at a very low rate compared to his NFL peers.
  • This is likely due to Caleb’s play style, as he likes to push the ball downfield, while RBs are mostly a checkdown option, with the average catch coming behind the line of scrimmage. Taking that checkdown 1-2x more per game might be one way for Caleb to become more consistent, which we noted was an area for growth in part 1.
• Overall, Caleb struggled to complete passes to all three positions, though a high yards/catch mark to both WR and TE made up for the low catch rate in terms of overall yardage.
• Colston Loveland and Luther Burden both stood out against zone in their rookie seasons.
  • Loveland: 51 targets, 71% completion, 9.0 yards/target
  • Burden: 39 targets, 85% completion, 12.4 yards/target
  • They were far and away the most efficient options against zone as rookies, as they had the top 2 marks in both yards/attempt and completion %. If they can maintain anything close to that efficiency while increasing their volume in year 2, that will help the passing attack as a whole.

Lessons Learned

Here are today’s main takeaways:

• Caleb Williams’ struggles to complete passes were mostly against zone, not man.
• Against man coverage, he effectively gained yardage targeting every main target except Olamide Zacchaeus, who is no longer a Bear.
• Against zone, he didn’t utilize RB very much but was generally effective throwing to both WR and TE. Larger roles for Luther Burden and Colston Loveland have the potential to really help here in 2026.

Since this is the last part of the series, here is my final takeaway after working through all this data:

Caleb was good, but not great, in 2025. He was great at avoiding negative plays (sacks and interceptions), and quite good at producing big ones, but issues with accuracy held him back. This led to an explosive but inconsistent offense. If he can become a more accurate passer (which is possible but not guaranteed), he can make the jump to be considered among the best QBs in the NFL.

However, Caleb will have to carry more on his shoulders in 2026. There are real concerns at 2 spots on the offensive line, plus the unit as a whole is unlikely to stay as healthy as they did last year. Caleb showed the ability to perform well when pressured in 2025, but he may very well have to do that more often in 2026. He will also need more help from his pass catchers, who can help him in these situations by working open during scramble drills and getting their drops under control.

Expectations for Caleb (and Chicago’s entire offense) will rightfully be sky high going into 2026. The foundation is in place, and the needed areas of improvement are clear. Now it’s on Caleb Williams, Ben Johnson, and the supporting cast to make the necessary adjustments to truly step into the game’s elite.