The Bears won twice without Caleb Williams, and that is the least interesting fact about his absence. Look at what the quarterback position actually produced in his place.
Tyson Bagent, starting with Williams officially inactive against Green Bay, went 12-of-21 for 87 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, a 27.4 passer rating and a 22.1 QBR. Case Keenum also threw in that game: 11-of-19 for 108 yards, one interception, one lost fumble. Two quarterbacks, three interceptions, zero touchdown passes. That is the cost of the hamstring Williams hurt in the Week 2 loss to the Vikings. Not a loss column. An offense that stopped existing past the line of scrimmage.
Bagent is the replacement, and he isn't good enough. That isn't a swipe at him, it's a description of a 4.1 yards-per-attempt afternoon with two sacks taken for 17 yards. And the Bears didn't even get through one game with him. Keenum threw 19 passes in the same game, which tells you the coaching staff's confidence in the backup ran out inside sixty minutes. When your QB2 is a stopgap and your QB3 is playing meaningful snaps in the same afternoon, the position is not covered. It's being survived.
The part of the team that gets worse is obvious, and it isn't the run game. D'Andre Swift carried nine times for 43 yards and a touchdown and caught four of five targets for 30 more. Roschon Johnson caught five of seven for 34. Chicago's backs were fine. What vanished was anything downfield. Luther Burden III's 47 yards on four catches, with a long of 23, was the closest thing to a chunk play the passing game managed, and Zavion Thomas had to manufacture the rest of the field position himself: six kick returns for 192 yards, long of 61. Six return chances in one game isn't a special teams flex. It's a confession about how many times the offense stalled.
By how much does it get worse? Enough that the Bears are asking their defense, their punter and their returner to win field position every series. Bagent's 87 passing yards is the lowest functional floor a modern NFL offense has. You can survive it against a bad team that gifts you short fields. That's what happened.
Does this change the season? Plainly: no, as long as Williams is back in Atlanta, and yes if he isn't. The Bears have won two in a row without him, and that tells you something real about the roster, which is that it can beat a bad team with replacement-level quarterback play. It cannot beat a good one that way. This is not a lost season. It becomes a lost stretch the moment the practice reports turn ambiguous.
Ben Johnson says Williams is close. Williams has resumed throwing, worked out on October 11, and could return as soon as Week 6, when the Bears visit the Falcons in Atlanta on Sunday, October 18. So the cost in that specific game is binary. If Williams plays, the last three weeks cost Chicago almost nothing beyond the games it already banked and a little rust. If he doesn't, Bagent gets the ball again and the Bears have to win the same way they did against Green Bay: turnovers, a defense that holds, and Thomas flipping the field on kickoffs. Any opponent that refuses to hand those over beats them, and I don't think the Falcons hand them over twice.
Here is the case against me. Chicago is 2-0 without Williams, and maybe I'm overvaluing the position in an offense built to run the ball and lean on defense. Maybe the gap between Williams and Bagent is smaller than the depth chart suggests. I don't buy it, and Swift's 4.8 yards per carry on nine attempts is why. Nine carries is a nice afternoon, not a formula you can run for a month while your quarterback throws for 87. The two wins were the team winning in spite of the position, and the margin was thin enough that I don't want to bet a month on it.
For anyone setting a lineup: Swift is the only Bears skill player I'm starting with confidence while this thing is unsettled, and Burden's six targets are worth a bench stash in deeper PPR leagues. If you're holding Bagent in a superflex, you wait on the practice report. If Williams is back, Bagent is a drop.
My prediction for the next month: Williams starts in Atlanta and doesn't miss another start. Specifically, I expect the Bears to clear Bagent's 87 passing yards before halftime on October 18.
What would change my mind is one bad practice report. If Williams isn't a full participant by the end of the week, I push the return back a week, and the Falcons game becomes a coin flip, because the Bagent version of this offense needs everything else to go right.
