Sunday felt like a turning point for quarterback Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears.

Williams looked the most comfortable he has all season in the pocket against the Dallas Cowboys. He effectively ran head coach Ben Johnson’s offense as Williams stayed in the pocket and spread the ball out to his playmakers to lead the Bears to a 31-14 win.

Williams ended the game with 298 passing yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions and a 67.9% completion rate. But a look into the numbers shows just how Williams put together his best showing, including a couple drives that changed the trajectory of the game.

Every week, the Shaw Local News Network takes a deep dive into the numbers in Bear Down, Nerd Up. This week, those numbers looked great when it came to signs of growth from Williams and the offense.

Pulling out the trick play

If there’s any play that exemplified how well things went for the Bears offense on Sunday, it’s the flea flicker it executed in the first quarter.

The play came on the first play of the Bears’ third drive. Williams pitched the ball over to running back D’Andre Swift who ran it to the line of scrimmage before he lofted the ball back to Williams as he got bumped. Williams then threw the ball and found rookie wide receiver Luther Burden III down the sideline for a 65-yard touchdown pass.

It was an impressive play in different aspects. Not only did it almost not happen because Swift was bumped and Burden bobbled the ball as he made the catch. But Williams didn’t throw the ball under the best circumstances.

When Williams got the ball back, he didn’t have much time to get settled and threw the ball flat-footed. Despite that, Williams launched the ball 62.1 yards in the air, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. It was the longest pass of the season in the NFL and the longest completion of Williams’ career — his previous record was 47.

The play was also the Burden’s first career touchdown catch and the third reception of his career.

“It was a great play call by coach,” Burden said. “Great protection by the [offensive line], great ball by [Williams]. It was a highly executed play.”

A time-consuming drive

The Bears seemed to all but seal Sunday’s win in the third quarter with a 19-play touchdown drive that took 9 minutes, 54 seconds off the clock. The drive included 11 straight runs and ended with a touchdown pass to wide receiver DJ Moore on fourth-and-4.

Williams, Swift, Moore, Burden and rookie Kyle Monangai combined to run the ball 12 times on the drive. The Bears averaged 3.3 yards per carry and Swift had the longest run for 11 yards. Williams went 5-of-7 for 36 yards, the longest pass a 12-yard reception by Moore.

Chicago picked up seven first downs to keep the clock running as the Bears moved down the field. Nineteen plays were the most for a Bears drive since at least 2000 and the most in the league this season.

“You’ve gotta be prepared,” Bears center Drew Dalman said. “Gotta be in good conditioning shape. Gotta be ready to execute when you’re tired, and when you’re fatigued, they’re fatigued. I think that’s a testament to our preparation that week. Drives like that are great as an offense. You chew clock, keep the defense off the field, so hopefully more of those.”

Spreading the ball around

Over the first two weeks of the season, Williams struggled to capitalize on deep shots. That started to change Sunday.

Williams matched or exceeded the league average in all passing zones that he threw to Sunday. He completed 2-of-3 pass attempts for 100 yards and two touchdowns on passes 20 yards or longer according to Next Gen Stats, went 5-of-9 for 86 yards and two touchdowns on passes between 10 to 19 yards and 6-of-8 for 60 yards on passes from the line of scrimmage to 9 yards. Williams also finished 6-of-7 for 52 yards on passes behind the line.

Eight different Bears caught at least one pass. Burden led the way with a career-high 101 receiving yards off three catches.

Creating some distance

Familiarity played a role in Sunday’s game. Former Bears head coach Matt Eberflus is the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator, a defense Johnson schemed against when he was the offensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions the last three seasons.

While Williams stayed in the pocket for the most part Sunday, his receivers were schemed into open pockets in Eberflus’ zone defense. Burden averaged 5.47 yards of separation from Cowboys defenders on his three targets. The league average 2.98.

Three other Bears receivers were well above the league average Sunday. Olamide Zaccheaus averaged 5.17 yards of separation on his four targets while Moore created 4.88 on his five targets. Wide receiver Rome Odzune also had 4.1 yards between defenders on his seven targets.

Plenty of time to throw

A lot of Williams’ success Sunday came because of a mostly clean pocket. The Bears offensive line didn’t allow a sack Sunday, a first for Williams in his career.

The left side of the line had the best performance according to Pro Football Focus. Left tackle Braxton Jones and left guard Joe Thuney didn’t allow a sack, quarterback hit or hurry. According to Next Gen Stats, Jones became the fourth left tackle in the NFL this season to not allow a single pressure.

Right tackle Darnell Wright allowed the line’s lone quarterback hit as well as a hurry. Dalman and right guard Jonah Jackson each allowed two hurries but no quarterback hits.

Need to get running

Despite a good performance on that long third quarter drive, the Bears will want to get more out of their running attack moving forward.

Swift finished the game with the eighth-worst rush yards over expected per attempt at minus 1.11 in Week 3 according to Next Gen Stats. New England’s TreVeyon Henderson had the league’s worst at minus 3.2. The statistic measure how many more or fewer yards a rusher gained than a computer model expected, with a negative rating meaning the runner did worse than expected.

The Bears rank 15th in the league averaging 113.3 rushing yards per game and 18th with a 4.1 rush per carry average. Chicago hasn’t had a running back rush for 100 yards this season and hasn’t had one in a game since Swift ran for 129 against the Washington Commanders in Week 8 last year.