The Caleb Williams Containment Policy

A fall like this is astounding — more than can be chalked up to any of the single teams involved. It can’t be understood as only a reflection on the woes of the Panthers (who won handily in Week 2) or the might of the Vikings, and it doesn’t tell a believable story about the Bears, either. 

Nobody gets 56 points worse in six days. It’s a myriad of factors, including the weather, health, luck, and yes, some real signal.

One of those factors is a pillar of the Bears’ offense: Caleb Williams scramble drills. It’s the central challenge to facing the Bears. How will you keep Williams from killing you on the ground, or with eye-popping heroics outside the pocket?

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In Week 1, Williams played outside the pocket 17 times. On those plays, between passing and true scrambling, he amassed 239 of his 334 yards from scrimmage, nine first downs and three touchdowns: one in the air and two on the ground.

Week 2 featured 12 such plays, and the Vikings limited Williams to 62 total yards from scrimmage, just three first downs, and no scores of any kind.

Williams left the game late with a hamstring injury, but up until that point was stifled. In fact, this was arguably Ben Johnson’s worst game as a play caller. 

How the hell did they do that? To stifle the king of scrambling, specifically on the scrambles? To undo the league’s latest offensive whiz kid? The Vikings had to succeed with a combination of effective planning and tight execution.

First, let’s get a sense for how Caleb Williams can kill you on the scramble drill, and the basic tenets of QB containment.

Keeping it as simple as possible: with a four-man rush against a five-man protection, the rules play out similarly to run fits. There are six possible escape lanes, and four guys to cover them. 

So you have to have some players responsible for two lanes, meaning they don’t have the luxury of a true pass rush. That can affect that player’s potential to produce, but as long as we’re not valuing the stat sheet over the result, that shouldn’t be a problem.

That’s still a plenty difficult job, and if you mess it up, the consequences can be dire. Here, Derrick Brown runs a stunt and then is responsible for both the A-gap and B-gap in front of him. 

Despite overpowering Joe Thuney, he drives just a bit too far upfield, and Williams can find space.

Lethal.

It doesn’t help that the Panthers were in man coverage on this play, meaning many defenders take their eyes off the quarterback. By the time everyone knows what’s going on, it’s too late.

Here’s one from last year’s season opener on Monday Night Football. The Vikings let Williams out and he finds Rome Odunze on the sideline.

Andrew Van Ginkel doesn’t prevent Williams from rolling to his right and initiating scramble rules. He is responsible for the C gap, but doesn’t free his upfield shoulder to dissuade that kind of rollout.

As soon as Williams breaks the pocket, the play transforms. Mostly universal scramble rules dictate how. Everyone works with Williams to the right. Odunze works back toward the quarterback, Olamide Zaccheus works deep, and Williams provides his own shallow running threat.

Now this needs to be defended like a flood concept. There is a high threat, a medium one, and a low one. Every route is now working toward the sideline, so the coverage needs to defend all three levels on that sideline while safely ignoring the other side of the field.

So when Theo Jackson doesn’t work back toward Williams along with Odunze, there’s an opening. Rome manages to cut under Jackson ever so slightly. It’s a slim margin, but Williams can make that throw. It doesn’t take much, and there are too many options. 

Things could have been even worse if Williams had time to throw to D.J. Moore, who was streaking open around the 25-yard line and had room to run after the catch. But considering he started way too far on the other side of the field, he’s not an option. Only receivers on the scramble side are available.

With Williams being as athletic as he is, containing him is a difficult job. Any play can become flood to either side at any time. You also don’t want to go too conservative and hem Williams in just to let him hang out in a clean pocket. 

So the pass rush plan needs to pressure Williams without letting him run free, while simultaneously setting up to be able to defend flood and still have enough coverage resources available for standard dropback passing. And that’s without even mentioning Chicago’s run game or play action strategy.

Sound easy enough?

The Vikings’ base coverage plan actually plays pretty comfortably into this. They prefer split-field zone coverage, whether they are blitzing or not. In fact, the Vikings have called cover 1 just three times so far in 2026, per PFF.

They also still shy away from Cover 3:

Instead, they prefer a combination of Cover 2, Cover 4, and Cover 6. These zones keep players’ eyes upfield, meaning they can identify when Williams has initiated a scramble and adjust accordingly.

The pass rush plan has to combine contain principles with an actual… plan to rush the passer. The Vikings chose to lean on Dallas Turner and try to generate mismatches. They’ve done a remarkably good job, with Turner generating 20 pressures and only three requiring him to beat a tackle.

NFL pass protection plans love to slide half the line to one side and create a wall. Slide three, four, or even five (pictured below) blockers to one side and wall it off, then man up everyone else. I went into depth on this in a video a couple of years ago. 

That wall is pretty hard to scramble through. Imagining if Carson Wentz had legs, his scramble options would be to bail straight out of the pocket to either side, or take the rushing lane up the B-gap between Will Fries and Brian O’Neill.

This is what Flores needs to control. If he can force Chicago to set the wall the way he wants, he can isolate matchups, predict the escape hatches, and control the quarterback. Moreover, blockers line up in the same order all the time. The tight end is always on the end. The center is always next to the guard. 

These rules are predictable enough to abuse. That’s where Flores makes his money.

The best example may be the last play of the game. The Bears have seven in protection, and the Vikings are rushing five. The Bears really don’t need to ask Colston Loveland to block Dallas Turner on the last play of the game.

But the Vikings’ front overloads the right side, forcing Chicago to fan out to pick it up. That gives right guard Jonah Jackson nothing to do, and leaves Loveland on an island with Turner.

Specifically, Jalen Redmond’s alignment creates the problem. He’s to the right of center Garrett Bradbury, and the gap to his left is totally uncovered. Kyle Van Noy and Dallas Turner are the other designated “bigs” as primarily pass rushers, so the remaining blockers prioritize them. That gives the Bears a double team on Redmond, a tackle on Van Noy, and Loveland on Dallas Turner.

De’Andre Swift could help, but since Blake Cashman is also blitzing, Turner is isolated. Now he just needs to win.

Van Noy and Redmond execute a stunt for good measure, but the Bears’ slide picks it up. It’s a moot point. Dallas Turner gets the sack. Ballgame.

So that’s a nice, clean example of the way the right front can manipulate protection rules. But you may notice: that is not Caleb Williams. How does this change when the quarterback is a much more significant threat?

The key idea isn’t isolating matchups for Dallas Turner, though that has happened plenty. It’s forcing the line to slide the way the Vikings want. That will cut off a specific escape lane, allowing the Vikings, not Caleb Williams, to dictate the terms of a scramble drill.

On the following play, everyone slants to the right. Redmond crosses the right guard’s face. Levi Drake Rodriguez fights across the left guard. Kyle Van Noy rushes upfield against the left tackle, and all this forces a four-man slide to our right. Darnell Wright takes Dallas Turner, and Eric Wilson blitzes in the split between them.

The Bears’ O-line slides to their left, creating a wall to that side that Williams couldn’t run through if he tried. As long as Van Noy cuts Williams off upfield, that won’t be a valid scrambling option.

Williams tries to scramble, but he can only go the way that puts him face to face with Eric Wilson, who beats Swift for what ultimately goes down as intentional grounding.

Also look how Dallas Turner keeps his hips square to the line of scrimmage — if Williams did get outside Wilson, Turner could trigger and chase him down, but he’d also be able to close down space if Williams tried to cut up the B gap.

This was the general shape of the pass rush plan. Slant to one side, and whoever is on the other side (usually Turner) stays conservative, ready for Williams to flush out. 

Maybe the most distinct example of this strategy comes from Harrison Smith, who ends up unblocked in this contain role. 

Instead of firing out of a cannon and getting juked, Smith breaks down like a punt gunner and keeps Williams in front of him.

Now, the question becomes: how do we decide which side to slant toward? There are two intuitive options: the side with more space (the field), or the side with more passing threats (the strength). Often, these are the same. After all, you want more receivers where they have space to run.

Another way to think of it is to slant the front to the side where a scramble drill would do more damage. Here, both the field and the strength are to the offense’s right.

It’s 3rd and long — a time where the Bears’ only reliable way out is the scramble drill. It’s imperative to take that away. The Vikings slant their front to the field, and to the trips side.

Again, Dallas Turner is the one on an island here. He has to beat the tight end’s block and close down the ever-elusive Williams.

Turner can’t bring Williams down, but he can’t take advantage of that space to his left because nobody is running a route on that side. Instead, he has to loop all the way back around, at which point a scramble for a few yards is the only reasonable option.

The important lesson in this play is that the most difficult contain job (Turner’s) is also the lowest leverage one. If Williams could scramble easily to his right, he could work his magic. But there’s no prize to his left, meaning Williams forces the much slower scramble right.

The Bears were happy to cut the field in half to make for juicy scramble opportunities and stress the Vikings’ depleted coverages. But that meant only one side was viable. Cut that off, and the Bears flounder.

So that’s the plan. Be conservative when warranted, slant the front toward the juicier side of the field to scramble to, and push the pocket. But that plan only works on the whiteboard. The players still need to execute it.

The Vikings consistently deployed this pass rush plan, slanting to the field side and tasking one player with contain to the boundary.