The Buffalo Bills will head into Soldier Field tomorrow for a Sunday night showdown against Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears. Earlier this week, first time head coach Ben Johnson announced that Caleb Williams and the starters who sat out of the game, per Courtney Cronin of ESPN.
This will officially be the first time that not just Bears fans, but all NFL fans will see Williams on the field with Ben Johnson in charge. It was the worst kept secret last year that Johnson was destined to join the Bears after being a successful offensive coordinator with the Detroit Lions. While Williams has a high ceiling, having a new head coach in your second season could have some bumps along the way, especially since he had a rough rookie year.
As for the Bills, there is a lot of continuity and their biggest challenge is just figuring out how the roster will fill out. That’s a great problem to have rather than trying to make sure that a bunch of new pieces that were added can work right away.
Caleb Williams getting first-time reps under Ben Johnson could set Bills up to thrive this Sunday
It’s very rare that when a quarterback gets a new head coach, it works immediately. Due to the fact that Bears have historically been bad with quarterbacks as it is and now that they are starting from the ground up again with a new head coach, this Sunday’s game could be a rough one in a live-action game for Williams.
This is a great opportunity for the Bills’ defense to perform at a high-level, starters or not, rather than what they showed last week against the New York Giants. Even though it’s just preseason, building up a team’s confidence is crucial going into Week 1, especially when going up against a team like the Baltimore Ravens.
Since Buffalo’s defense has a lot of new faces, they will need to find a way to mesh together and show that they can be a dominant unit. Going up against a Bears offense that has a good amount of new pieces is a great starting point.
I’m not saying that Williams and the Bears’ offense will be completely lost because quite frankly, they do have a lot of talent on paper. However, being in a new offensive scheme is never easy so they will have their ups and downs against the Bills.