Matt Ryan was at Mercedes-Benz Stadium two weeks ago for induction into the Atlanta Falcons Ring of Honor when he crossed paths with former coach Mike Smith.
The Falcons were hosting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that night and Smith, who coached Ryan for the first seven seasons of his career, brought up the second start of Ryan’s rookie year, a Week 2 game at Tampa Bay in 2008.
“Matt, I’ve got to be honest with you,” Smith said. “That first half was the worst half of football you ever played in your career.”
“All right, Smitty,” Ryan replied. “Thanks, man.”
Ryan laughed recalling the interaction on Wednesday when discussing the ascent of Chicago Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams and his Washington Commanders counterpart, Jayden Daniels.
The top-two picks from the draft have started fast, improving the fortunes of a pair of languishing franchises. The Commanders are one of only three teams with the Miami Dolphins and Las Vegas Raiders that have gone longer since their last playoff victory than the Bears, who won a divisional-round game after the 2010 season.
It sets up a juicy Week 8 meeting between the Bears and Commanders on Sunday at Northwest Field, one the NFL flexed into the 3:25 p.m. national TV slot on CBS. The game loses a little sizzle if Daniels doesn’t play because of a rib injury suffered in last week’s 40-7 thrashing of the Carolina Panthers. Daniels is expected to be a game-time decision after returning to practice Friday. Marcus Mariota will replace Daniels if he cannot go.
It’s a good talker and a great conversation for Chicago and Washington: Which organization landed the better quarterback?
The Bears are fortunate there’s a discussion. It means they finally have a quarterback whose production has come along with some of the promise. Ultimately, neither side is an actual winner unless it has a quarterback capable of leading his team to a championship.
Smith wasn’t kidding about that ugly first half in Ryan’s second start against a Buccaneers defense led by Monte Kiffin and some cornerstones of the great Tampa teams with linebacker Derrick Brooks and cornerback Ronde Barber, both Hall of Famers.
Ryan was intercepted on the third play from scrimmage and went 3 of 15 for 36 yards with two interceptions and a sack in the first 30 minutes of a 24-9 loss. He shared the amusing recounting of an ugly game because it’s something Williams and Daniels have avoided to this point, the kind of stinker that sends the fan base into an uproar for a week.
What were they thinking, picking this guy?
Williams has made strides almost weekly with the Bears (4-2) working to stack as many wins as possible before they launch into divisional play in Week 11. Daniels has been everything the Commanders (5-2) could have hoped for: He leads the league in completion percentage (75.6%), is sixth in passer rating (107) and has run for 372 yards.
In the last three games, Williams has completed 74.1% of his passes and posted a passer rating of 122.8, the kind of hot streak foreign to quarterbacks in these parts. It has created a sense of confidence throughout the locker room and elsewhere inside Halas Hall.
“Am I surprised? I don’t know,” wide receiver DJ Moore said. “We’re just playing football. His struggles came in Houston and Indy (Weeks 2 and 3) as you seen, we all seen, and he’s bounced back and been on a roll since. Hopefully he got that out of the way. He’ll just go stay on this roll.”
Those struggles, though, were nothing like the pitfalls Ryan encountered as a rookie, when he helped the Falcons to an 11-5 record and trip to the playoffs.
“Probably the thing I have been most impressed with is the consistent improvement week to week, and that’s what you want to see from a young player,” Ryan said of Williams. “There are going to be struggles, right? There’s going to be parts where it’s not as good as you would like and I think specifically the first couple of weeks it was tough. And I really think that is going to benefit him moving forward, the ability to keep your head down, keep working and gradually see growth and improvement. The last couple of weeks, he’s been excellent.”
Ryan, who said he is looking forward to analyzing the quarterbacks Sunday on CBS’ “The NFL Today” show, specifically cited the timing and rhythm in the passing game and the “clarity” in seeing downfield, which has led to more explosive plays than there were in the first few outings.
“The hardest to go through was the adjustment to the speed of the pass rush,” Ryan said of his experience. “Looking downfield and the timing and rhythm with receivers, that comes quicker. But the adjustment to the pass rush is something that every week it is there in the NFL. There are no breaks. Every week you are seeing different schemes, different players, guys with more ability than you have ever seen in your life. And that affects, at least in my opinion, your vision more so than what they’re doing in the secondary.”
The first step, Ryan said, is having an understanding of which rushers will not be accounted for in the protection and being able to work off that. Trust everything around you is going to be right and handle what your responsibility is. It’s a lot easier to talk about than do, as you see so many young quarterbacks and even older ones have a propensity to drop their eyes early in the play.
In stacking up the two quarterbacks, Ryan put Daniels a little ahead of Williams, citing a smoother start to the season.
“Part of that is due to the fact that they’ve used him in the run game more (than the Bears) have Caleb,” Ryan said. “I think that has taken some of the pressure off of him, specifically like the first two or three weeks of the season of kind of letting him get into these games a little bit using his legs, and I think that has benefitted him. But his passing down the field has been incredible. One of the better deep ball throwers and he’s been on the same page with Terry McLaurin and some of their wide receivers. His decision-making, timing over the middle of the field and to the outside and in the intermediate passing game has been very good.
“The thing that jumps off the tape to me is the confidence of both of these guys and the freedom they are playing with. That’s probably the thing with Jayden and Caleb that has been most impressive to me.”
Former Bears defensive coordinator Ron Rivera, an analyst for the NFL Network, agreed.
“Jayden has impacted his football team more than Caleb, and I picked Caleb to win rookie of the year,” Rivera said. “On TV, I picked him because I really thought Caleb would start faster. Looking at Caleb, I said, ‘Damn, he’s got a great group of specialists around him.’ He really does. Offensive line is a little shaky but the first two weeks, I said, ‘Can I be that wrong? No, this guy will get better.’ And then, he slowly started to get better. When you watch Jayden, you see the same thing except his playmakers don’t have the names that they have in Chicago. It’s been a lot of fun to watch.”
Neither the Bears nor the Commanders have beaten a team that currently has a winning record. The teams the Bears have defeated are 7-20, and those Washington has topped are 10-25. So neither quarterback has done any giant slaying of an opponent with a dangerous defense.
“The next step is going against some really good defenses and being productive and finding ways to win,” Ryan said. “At the same time, you’ve got to go out there and take care of business regardless of who you going against. They are all professionals. They see the stats. They see the tape. But you still have to go out there and do that and be a professional in that way.
“Let’s see what (the Bears) can do against some better defenses because frankly as they get into division play in the NFC North, that’s what you’re going to see and that’s what you’re going to have to beat if you want to win the division, one, and two, if you want to make the playoffs, you’re going to have to beat good teams.”
If all goes as planned — and the Bears’ development of Williams to this point certainly appears to be on point — he’ll be a worthy candidate for a quarterback discussion from the 2024 draft class, which is what matters to the organization. Williams and Daniels are running parallel races — not one against each other — and if they both excel, it will be years before an actual winner can be declared.
“Obviously, he’s on the same side, the NFC side, so I’ll be seeing him a good amount I would say,” Williams said. “We’ll see from this game and in the future. I think it’s going to be great for us, and the battle between us is what y’all want to kind of talk about. But my job is to go out there and win the game for the Bears.”
If Daniels does not play, Round 2 is in the works. The Bears are scheduled to play at the Commanders in 2025, by which point there will be more data points to compare the QBs side by side.
Just know: Right now, the Bears are pleased with their guy.
Scouting report
Brian Robinson Jr., Commanders running back
Information for this report was obtained from NFL scouts.
Robinson, 6-foot-1, 228 pounds, is in his third season after being selected in the third round in 2022 out of Alabama. He leads the Commanders with 396 rushing yards and is tied for third in the league with six rushing touchdowns.
Robinson is on track to have his first 1,000-yard season after gaining 797 yards as a rookie and 733 last season in a rushing offense that enters the game ranked third in the league with 165.4 yards per game and third in yards per carry at 5.19. Robinson has caught eight passes for 68 yards.
“I think Robinson could flourish if he was utilized as a three-down player,” the scout said. “They brought in Austin Ekeler to be the passing game target and change-of-pace back. Last year, that guy was Antonio Gibson, but I do think Robinson has the ability to do that. He’s a decisive north-south runner and he’s got really light feet that allows him to slalom or skate through the trash, and he surges when he gets to the second level. He is everything about an old-school running back that can play downhill and handle heavy volume if he has to.
“He’s really good in the low red zone. He runs behind his pads and brings pop on contact. You’re not going to bring this guy down with arm tackles. I’d like to see him in an offense where they allow him to be a receiver because he can do that as well. It’s just not his role in Washington. In Kliff Kingsbury’s offense — it’s a combination of pro and spread concepts — he can run out of the gun, he can run with the QB under center. He’s a good zone runner and an excellent gap-scheme runner because it gives him a defined path. He’s got really soft hands as a pass catcher. He’s not Alvin Kamara in the open field but he can catch out of the backfield and block in pass protection. He gives you everything you want. He just doesn’t have the elite traits of the top guys.”
