CINCINNATI-TO-CLEVELAND — I now have six NFL training camps under my belt. Here’s what I have from Week 1, as we head into Week 2 with a full head of steam …
Bears
Caleb Williams is going to be under a microscope. There is absolutely no sugarcoating it. The Chicago Bears’ second-year quarterback had some rough moments Friday morning, and has had rough moments throughout the spring, too.
It’s not an accident, either.
New coach Ben Johnson didn’t tiptoe into Halas Hall. The two years he waited, and passed on other chances to become a head coach, gave the 39-year-old plenty of time to cultivate the plan he’s executing now, and it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s detailed and designed to be difficult, and the trial by fire the players were going to go through was always going to be hotter on the quarterback.
That started with what Johnson saw on tape from Williams while studying the 2024 season, and even going back to break down everything he did at Oklahoma and USC before that.
“I saw a guy with immense potential. Every week he made throws that made you drop your jaw a little bit. Hell, I experienced it when I was standing on the sideline when he played against us,” said Johnson, referencing his own experience in the NFC North. “But what you also see is a lack of anticipation at times, which—that comes with reps—you gotta do things over and over again. That’s not abnormal for a rookie quarterback.
“And it’s some of the presnap stuff he could improve on, the shifts, the motions. There were times when his eyes weren’t quite in the right spot. Even though I hadn’t been in the building, you kind of know where he should be looking and it wasn’t that way. That’s where we’ve been pretty hard on him since we’ve been in the building.”
That is the context of what I saw Friday in Lake Forest.
Williams’s first throw of the morning during the 8 a.m. hour was an off-balance throwaway that failed to make it to the sideline, after a rusher came free. A couple of snaps later, he rushed a throw into the flat, and no one was home. A few snaps after that, he tried to throw a ball into the opposite flat, and a blitzing defensive back was right in the path of the ball, knocking it down. Had the corner caught it, it’d have been a pick-six.
That all sounds rough, and it was. However, it is also important to try to gain an understanding of what Johnson, coordinator Declan Doyle, and the offensive staff are trying to accomplish at this early stage in camp.
The period that covers the three aforementioned throws is what the Bears call their “Wake Up” period at the start of practice, where the defense sends pressure at the offense to give DC Dennis Allen’s unit the work it needs, and also tests Williams. It stresses Williams after the snap, yes, but more so it’s about what it’s forcing him to do before it, with what the quarterback casually refers to as P.S.P. (presnap procedure).
The Bears want to see the right checks. They want to see the right communication. They want to see Williams’s eyes in the right place. They know it’s not automatic.
They also think that if they can accelerate the volume of things Williams is seeing and dealing with, then it’ll accelerate his growth, and also their knowledge of what he can and can’t do heading into his second season as a pro.
“That’s where we’ve been pretty hard on him since we’ve been in the building,” Johnson said, “being consistent and true to his thought process, presnap.”
So there’ll be more rough moments to come, and those will be analyzed harshly, for sure, in what’s a tough football market with high expectations, and with a fanbase still carrying the scars of recent failed first-round quarterbacks Mitchell Trubisky and Justin Fields.
From there, when the staff has gathered enough information and there has been sufficient growth, Johnson, Doyle & Co. will begin to refine the scheme and tailor it to what they know Williams and his teammates can handle and excel in, in the present. Only then will the identity of Johnson’s first offense in Chicago take shape.
Bottom line: It’s a process, and the bumps for Williams are there, and the Bears knew they would be.
“Right now, Ben’s just testing to see, how much can I give this kid, what is the retention level, how much in the presnap operation can he handle in terms of the motions and making those calls at the line of scrimmage, the protections,” GM Ryan Poles said a few hours after Friday’s practice. “Going back to last year, there’s some things he never did in college that’s a part of this game, that a lot of rookies have to go through. There’s a lot of verbiage, a lot of things at the line of scrimmage. It’s just getting those things down.
“This is a different system, but I’ve seen a huge improvement from last year to this year just in terms of the operation. Ben’s system, there’s a lot there. So I think it’s just overload him now, figure out what he can do, and go from there. And then build it year after year after year.”
That’s why, if you ask Johnson what this will look like in six weeks, he’s not being coy when he says that he’s not really sure.
“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know that we’ve sat down and talked through any minutiae like that,” Johnson said. “We’re just focused on the entirety of it, and getting better in every little area right now.”
So what the final product is remains a mystery.
But it’s a good bet it’ll look a lot better than it might to onlookers right now.
Vikings
J.J. McCarthy is in a different spot than Williams, having not played last year, but he’s benefiting from a similar level of work now. The interesting thing about it is that it wasn’t initially part of the Vikings’ plan to do it this way.
The team attempted to sign Sam Darnold back for another year. They offered Daniel Jones around $15 million to extend the Vikings cameo he made at the end of the season for another year.
The idea, then, was pretty simple. McCarthy was coming off two knee surgeries (the second being more of a clean-up), missed the entirety of his rookie season, and half of his first camp, and the Vikings have a veteran team that won 14 games a year ago. Minnesota is in position to compete at the highest level, so having insurance against the unknown at the most important position on the field made sense.
The twist? McCarthy’s better after Minnesota struck out on landing both of those insurance policies. It’s not because he hasn’t had to compete for the job, as he would’ve had to if Darnold or Jones had returned. It’s because it’s allowed Kevin O’Connell and his staff to flood McCarthy with work from the minute the offseason program started to now, the same way the Bears have with Williams.
“Especially considering we didn’t get a full training camp last year,” O’Connell said, agreeing with the point. “Where he was at coming off that preseason game [against the Raiders] last year, he was going to start get some exposure with that first group. It was a competitive situation with him and Sam, and then Sam had himself a great year, which was all part of the plan. I was always in the world where Sam would play great. Whether Sam was here or getting paid a lot of money somewhere else [was the question]. And that’s what happened.
“With D.J., that was more the opportunity to add him in-season, knowing we could get some real, free time with him. To get him in our building, we’re proud of what we built around here for the quarterback, with the quarterback, we thought that might entice him to explore being a part of it even more. Now, both of those guys are getting great opportunities elsewhere. And J.J. took every single rep with the 1s in the spring.”
As such, McCarthy built a rapport with new center Ryan Kelly, who was acquired, in part, because the Vikings knew how the heady veteran could help take the mental part of the game off a young quarterback. Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison were there in for the spring, too. T.J. Hockenson was healthy. All of which allowed for McCarthy to find his voice as the leader of the group.
From there, he led player-run passing camps in Nashville and then locally, ahead of the start of training camp. In turn, everyone’s behind him as training camp gets off the ground.
"He’s got an unbelievable way of connecting with guys in a way where it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to be anybody that he’s not,” O’Connell continued. “He’s authentic. He’s himself. He’s had experience throughout his football career, leading from a younger age. It might be different now with some guys that are as accomplished as a Justin Jefferson, experienced as Ryan Kelly. He understands there’s an enthusiasm and an enjoyment to playing quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings that he wants to make sure he shows the guys.
“That’s infectious.”
From a technical standpoint, it’s helped, too.
One particular area where all the work he’s gotten has shown up is in McCarthy’s ability to layer throws. A criticism of McCarthy coming out of Michigan was that everything was a fastball, and that he lacked the off-speed pitches that NFL quarterbacks need to fit balls into the tighter windows a passer sees in pro football.
That’s one place where losing last season hurt McCarthy. Scout-team work gives a young quarterback a chance to see those smaller holes he’ll need to put the ball through and, in playing against his team’s starting defense, the shot to learn and work the different types of throws it’ll take to hit them. There’s no replacement for physically doing it over and over, and that McCarthy’s taken every first-team rep has given him every chance to do that.
There are plenty of other examples like that one, which McCarthy needed to improve over where he was when he got hurt last August, and has.
“He was able to not only check those boxes but knock it out of the park from the work he put in,” O’Connell said. “Everyone’s aware of the work the quarterback’s putting in, any NFL quarterback. The growth from that time to now is just a guy that has time on task with his teammates, with his coaches, in this building, working toward something, not working away from the injury. That’s in the past now.
“He came into training camp in unbelievable shape, 220 pounds. Everything he did was purposeful in having a great Day 1 of training camp. Then, let’s try to have a great Day 2, and we’re going to get to the season, and then the real rollercoaster will start. Hopefully, the work we put in will limit the peaks and valleys that come for a young player at that position.”
Or at least more so than if he hadn’t been afforded all the work he’s gotten.
Lions
Maybe I’m the only one who finds this interesting, but the Lions aren’t hanging on to the way last year ended. There are legitimately no reminders of that tough night against the Commanders in January lingering around the team. I’ve known Jared Goff for almost a decade now, and the look on his face when I asked what he might take from it, at the end of an otherwise friendly catch-up, showed me all I needed to know.
The smile came right off Goff’s face.
"It’s pretty obvious,” he said. “They played better than we did, took care of the ball and gave themselves a chance. They found some takeaways. We had some turnovers. We couldn’t catch up after that. It was too little too late. Thought we fought well. We did fight back. I tip my cap to them. They were better than us.”
Goff’s right. The Commanders won the turnover battle 4–0. The first one led to Washington getting its first lead. The second one gave the visitors their first two-possession lead. The third preserved a 31–21 halftime lead, killing a scoring opportunity for the Lions in the final minute of the half. The fourth, more or less, was the dagger, setting the Commanders up to finish the Lions off in the fourth quarter.
The larger point I take from it is that Detroit’s not veering from its course.
Yes, the Lions lost both of their coordinators (we’ll have a story on that soon) and the pivot man, Frank Ragnow, of arguably the NFL’s best offensive line. And no one is saying that replacing Ragnow, Johnson and Aaron Glenn will be easy.
That said, the Dan Campbell–Brad Holmes Lions still have a ton going for them. Goff’s played well, that night, notwithstanding. Taylor Decker and Penei Sewell are still anchors for the offensive line, and leaders such as Amon-Ra St. Brown and Alex Anzalone are still around. Beyond those guys, so many of the team’s best players (Aidan Hutchinson, Brian Branch, Jameson Williams, Sam LaPorta, Alim McNeill, et al) are still ascending.
The overall point is there’s still a lot to like and plenty to make you believe that the Lions’ bad night was really just that, and not much else.
Packers
To wrap up this NFC North whiparound, the Packers are interesting in that their high-class question revolves around internal improvement. You can start here: It’s remarkable how cleanly the franchise emerged from both the Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers eras, especially considering how messy the end of each was.
Green Bay has its quarterback in 26-year-old Jordan Love. It has a balanced roster, a young head coach and GM, and has gone from 8–9 to 9–8 to 11–6 from Rodgers’s last year through Love’s first two as a starter.
Few teams detach from legends like that, and the Packers deserve a ton of credit for it.
That said, if you look back, this was the juncture at which the last such transition brought the Lombardi Trophy back to Wisconsin. Rodgers’s third year as a starter was 2010, when the Packers ripped off three consecutive road wins in the playoffs, then won Super Bowl XLV.
Could it happen again? If it does, just being around that group and getting a feel for where the key players are at will probably come through in the form of outstanding players becoming available.
As for who that might be …
• The Packers have a talented, productive young group of receivers in Dontayvion Wicks, Romeo Doubs, Jayden Reed and (when he’s back, probably in October) Christian Watson. They drafted Matthew Golden and Savion Williams in the top 100. At tight end, Tucker Kraft and Luke Musgrave are bursting with potential. The question, then, is whether one of these guys can become the guy. Hopes are high that Kraft might be able to. Wicks, too.
• There are four homegrown first-round picks along the defensive line. Is there a game-wrecker whose offenses have to account for on every play? Kenny Clark’s return to health should help. The staff needs more from Rashan Gary, and Gary seems motivated to show that he can do it. And Lukas Van Ness and Devonte Wyatt both have the athleticism to get there.
• Wildly gifted Edgerrin Cooper flashed as a rookie and has a chance to be a very serious difference-maker for coordinator Jeff Hafley’s defense. We saw what Xavier McKinney’s capable of last year. If Cooper comes on, then Hafley would have two movable middle-of-the-field pieces to play chess.
• Then, there’s Love. You’ll see in a story we have coming on him how he knows he needs to find a better level of consistency. That said, the work ethic, leadership and talent are there for a guy who’s become a Pied Piper in that building as the team’s starter.
Yes, it’s a lot to expect all of this to come together.
But if it does …
Raiders
The Raiders/Christian Wilkins dustup is a peculiar one, and I’m not sure the team did anything out of bounds.
This dispute started last October when Wilkins sustained a Jones fracture in his foot. He had season-ending surgery after playing in only five games. Still, the expectation was that the star defensive tackle, signed to a four-year, $110 million deal the March before, would be back in full at the start of the Raiders’ offseason program in April.
That didn’t happen. Through Wilkins’s rehab process, another injury in the same area of his foot occurred, and that slowed his return from the Jones fracture. The Jones fracture has improved, but the second injury prevented a return, and doctors determined that the only way to address that injury was for Wilkins to undergo another surgery.
That injury has had Wilkins in a boot since March, but, for one reason or another, Wilkins has refused to have the surgery that the doctors said he needed.
As for where this strange situation goes next, Wilkins could find a doctor who could clear him to play football. If that happens, then he’d have to find a team that would be willing to take the risk. He could sign with another team and undergo the surgery, which would likely knock him out for most of the season, but could allow for a return somewhere in the back half of the schedule. How much he’d get paid is an open question, too, since whether the Raiders pay out his guaranteed money (virtually all of his money for 2025 is) is in dispute.
The resolution of that dispute is the other part of this. In early June, the Raiders voided $35.2 million in guarantees in Wilkins’s contract. Given 50 days to fight that, Wilkins put his grievance in on precisely the 50th day of the window, which was last Thursday.
There’s plenty of fallout coming, regardless of the outcome of either element of this. I’m sure this isn’t the sort of thing that Pete Carroll wanted to deal with on the doorstep of his first training camp in Vegas. While this does feel like another one of these cases where a player isn’t trustworthy of a team’s medical staff—a dynamic that has existed forever in the NFL—Wikins was initially fine with the doctors’ diagnosis.
And then, there’s what Josina Anderson reported in the aftermath, that Wilkins had a weird encounter/confrontation with a teammate, something that I wouldn’t dispute, and may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back in this case.
Put all this together, and I’m not gonna guess how this one ends.
But we do know it won’t be with Wilkins, who’s always been a bit of a different guy, in a Raiders uniform.
Browns
Shedeur Sanders isn’t going to start the opener. If you’ve followed my reporting on this over the past six months, then follow where the trail takes you. Before the draft, teams were surprised by how far behind, from a football-knowhow standpoint, Sanders was. There were the individual anecdotes, including one from his meeting with the Giants, where his frustration with it became apparent. Then, in the month-plus he spent in the Browns’ offseason program, which showed he had a ways to go developmentally, put him fourth in the quarterback derby.
So that, early in training camp, that he’s a clear No. 4 in the pecking order should come as no surprise, especially given that the other rookie, Dillon Gabriel, is being compared with. Gabriel, a six-year college player, excelled in his pre-draft process, and his football IQ and instincts for the position proved to be top-notch (the physical skill set was the question).
Most of the first-team reps, according to the reporters on the ground in Cleveland, were going to Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett, before Pickett got nicked up over the weekend (it’s a short-term hamstring injury). The leftovers are evidently going to Gabriel.
The reality of the situation is that the Browns don’t have enough work to go around to make this a completely even competition. They can’t bastardize preparations for the other 10 guys who’ll be in the huddle on Sunday to be “fair” to all four quarterbacks. Thus, an uneven distribution, as I see it, was inevitable, and the spring was used to sort out who would get what in terms of reps.
That means that anyone could figure Sanders was playing from behind here, winning the job for the fifth-round pick, at this point, seems like it’d take a Super Bowl LI-level comeback. Also, that’s not the end of the world.
There are two reasons, as I see it, why this is even a story. One is Sanders’s last name. The other is the inflated view of that many people had for months.
I can’t recall any fifth-round rookie quarterback receiving starter reps at the start of training camp over my two decades covering the league, without an injury or some other unusual circumstance leading to that. So, Sanders is fighting to improve and create more opportunities for himself.
The good news is that, despite being behind the other three Browns quarterbacks, he has worked hard to catch up, and has made up some ground. But progress and actually being a viable starting option are two different things.
At this point, Sanders doesn’t seem to be one.
Colts
The Colts quarterback competition isn’t going to last forever. I didn’t think about it until I got to Indy, and asked Shane Steichen—this is the first real quarterback derby of the third-year Colts coach’s NFL career.
He started in the pros in 2013 in Cleveland, where Brandon Weeden was going into his second year as a first-round pick. From there, he had a long run with Philip Rivers as a Chargers assistant, followed by a final year in which there was a plan to redshirt Justin Herbert and start Tyrod Taylor. Then, he had two years with Jalen Hurts in Philly, and the past two with Anthony Richardson in Indy.
After signing Daniel Jones to compete with Richardson for the job, Steichen had to work from scratch to devise a plan that would give both a real shot. So, the way the Colts are doing is, essentially, is to split work during practice periods—with each getting a look with the 1s and the 2s in those periods—to try and best get a side-by-side look and each a fair shake.
From there, Steichen set pretty clear criteria.
“I sat them both down, I talked about the consistency of the operation, not making mistakes on a continued basis,” Steichen said. “And the guy who does that will end up being the starter. The way the reps have worked out, they both get reps with the ones every day. The reason I’m doing that is because you might have a third-down day and I don’t want one guy to get all the third downs. Same thing with redzone and all that, as we go through this thing. So rotating it that way, hopefully, it’ll show itself soon.”
Naturally, the next question was not just when a decision will be made, but also, to do right by the rest of the players preparing for and working toward Week 1, at what point do you have to make a call to avoid it adversely affecting the team’s readiness for September.
“Yeah, I don’t have an exact date,” Steichen continued. “I have a thought in my head, but …”
He didn’t want to pin himself down, which is understandable.
But the calendar can tell the story on this one. The Colts have a set of joint practices, then a game, with the Packers next week. It’d make sense for Steichen, OC Jim Bob Cooter and the staff to use that to make a decision—and then be in position to use the following week’s joint practices, and game, with the Ravens to get the offense going toward Week 1 with a starting quarterback in place.
Of course, the staff can’t force timing on it, so we’ll see what happens.
At this point, I do think the quarterback will be Jones. The Colts had 29 turnovers (third worst in the league) and ranked 29th in total defense last year, and still won eight games. As a result, as Steichen said, they don’t need Superman at quarterback. They need someone who’ll keep the train on the tracks. I think, based on what Steichen said there, on “the consistency of the operation,” the ex-Giant and Viking will wind up making the most sense.
Training camp stats
We need to stop overanalyzing training camp clips and statistics. And I hope the item I had to lead this column—on Williams and the Bears—helps to illustrate why.
Getting to the season is a long haul for players and coaches. There’s a lot to work through, and digest, and endure. Making things about single clips or practices is nonsense for a simple reason. In most cases, the information is disseminated without regard for what coaches are trying to accomplish on a particular day, which can vary from one day to the next.
Again, take the Chicago example. Johnson’s trying to figure out what he can and can’t do with Williams, and accelerate his learning. If he wanted to make it look pretty, I’m reasonably sure that the new Bears coach could figure out a way to do it. But that’s not the point of training camp. It’s to get a team ready to play a season. So you make it hard, not easy, on your players, and sometimes that results in an unpleasant day, or even an unpleasant week.
So, when you see some video of a tight spiral majestically floating from a quarterback to his intended target, and you see an aggregator (I won’t name them here) say something like, This [Team X] offense will be SPECIAL … Or, conversely, you see an ugly play lead to a tweet with the cringe emoji slapped on the end of it … You’re probably not learning a whole lot about what’s happening at the practice the video came from.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my rant on that.
Giants
It did make sense for Brian Daboll to name Russell Wilson his starter. That Giants team went through a lot last year. The Andrew Thomas injury was a killer. The Saquon Barkley storyline hovered over the season. And the quarterback situation was the dagger.
That’s why I can see why Daboll might want to make camp simpler on his players.
Picking Wilson now does that. The linemen get to hear his voice. Malik Nabers and the receivers get to build chemistry with him. I’d presume that the spring showed that he clearly was the best option, at least for now, which gives Daboll the leeway to do this.
Now, Wilson’s been through a lot the past four years.
The 2021 season in Seattle wasn’t comfortable, as the Seahawks introduced a new offensive system and were past the Legion of Boom era. Then, an injury opened the door the more economical Geno Smith to show what he could do, the team went 7–10, and that was that.
Wilson’s two years in Denver were worse. The first was Nathaniel Hackett’s lone season with the Broncos, marked by the organization’s first ownership transition in a generation, which ended in a disappointing end. The second had Sean Payton, who had no investment in Wilson, coming in to reset everything, including, eventually, the quarterback position.
While Wilson had his first winning season since 2020 last year in Pittsburgh, the Steelers staff was never entirely sold on him as the quarterback, to the point where the brass made an effort to retain Justin Fields, rather than Wilson, early this offseason.
So, with all of that now history, and a shot to play with a coaching staff that has a lot on the line, too, it’ll be interesting to see if we see a different Russ in 2025. He should be sufficiently humbled. He should be plenty motivated—if anything would renew his drive, it should be the chance to prove the rest of the league wrong.
I don’t know, to be clear, if this will work.
However, I would say that by making this decision early, Daboll is probably giving everyone the best chance to make that happen.
Quick-hitters
Football’s back, and so are our quick-hitting Takeaways. Let’s roll …
• Rashawn Slater’s four-year, $114 million extension with the Chargers is a bargain. Slater plays a premium position and, yes, he’s now the highest-paid player at left tackle. But compared to other premium spots in the market, such as receiver and edge rusher, Joe Hortiz, Jim Harbaugh & Co. got a steal.
• Slater’s deal is also a reminder of how we don’t always have everything down before the draft. In 2021, a majority of teams, I’d say, saw Slater as a guard. He hasn’t played a snap there, instead sticking to his college position, which, safe to say now, has worked out.
• Jake Ferguson at $52 million over four years is a nice deal for the Cowboys, too. He’ll never be Rob Gronkowski or Travis Kelce. However, signing a good starter at $13 million per year is good work by Dallas. As for Micah Parsons …
• Terry McLaurin’s holdout became a hold-in Sunday, as he reported to camp and immediately went on PUP with an ankle injury, an ankle that I bet would be healed by a few strokes of the pen by the Commanders. In the end, that one will get done. It’s just tricky because of how the market at the position changed last year with Justin Jefferson and CeeDee Lamb’s deals. To me, the Garrett Wilson contract should help push this along.
• One other contract situation to address is Trey Hendrickson’s. I was with the Bengals on Sunday. I think this remains the least predictable of the remaining squabbles. I don’t think getting the average per year right (probably in the mid-30s) is much of a problem. The guarantee, for a guy in his 30s, will be the issue.
• If early practice work is an indication, the Jaguars are very much preparing Travis Hunter to play full-time both ways. I think it’s worth reiterating what a lot of people (myself included) said about his college career in regards to that—the football IQ and competitive focus you need to pull it off at this level of the game is immense.
• With Joe Mixon hobbled, the Texans’ signing of Nick Chubb has its context. It’s tough to rely on one guy with the mileage that these two have on their legs. In case you’re wondering, Dameon Pierce, who Houston was once excited about, is next up after Chubb.
• Matthew Stafford’s back injury is another reminder of what he’s fought through the past few years. He’s taken a beating, dating back to his time in Detroit (which is why I don’t think he’s a player who will linger in the league into his 40s).
• There’s reason to be excited about where Drake Maye’s headed in the new Patriots offense. It’s not the easiest system to pick up, and Maye had a reputation coming out of college as a player who had a long way to go. That he’s adapting pretty quickly to Josh McDaniels’s system is a good sign of the direction he’s headed.
• I know people had fun with Justin Fields’s toe injury/cart-off. But I don’t think his toughness has ever been, or will ever be, a question with the Jets quarterback.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL Takeaways: Inside Ben Johnson’s Plan for Bears QB Caleb Williams.