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# The 2025 Numbers Complicate Both Ben Johnson Quarterback Narratives
- URL: https://www.statsdigest.com/ben-johnson-detroit-chicago-2025-goff-williams/
- Published: 2026-08-24T11:59:48.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-24T11:59:47.000Z
- Description: Detroit's run game collapsed while Chicago's protection improved—neither QB got more accurate.
- Author: Bill Seifert
- Tags: Ben Johnson, Jared Goff, Caleb Williams, Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears, EPA

When Ben Johnson left Detroit for Chicago last offseason, the two consensus takes went like this: Jared Goff would revert to his pre-Johnson mean, and Caleb Williams' passing would finally be unlocked. 2025 is over, the numbers are in, and both takes hold up only in a much narrower sense than advertised.

Goff did not regress. Detroit's *run* game did. And Chicago's leap under Johnson showed up almost entirely in the pocket — fewer sacks, more touchdowns — not in Williams' underlying accuracy, which actually got worse.

## Table of Contents

1. Detroit's passing rank barely moved
2. Goff's year-over-year numbers are fine
3. Detroit's run game collapsed
4. Chicago's sack rate cratered
5. Williams' CPOE fell even as scoring rose

## Detroit's passing rank barely moved

Detroit finished 2025 with a pass EPA/play of **+0.168**, third in the NFL behind only Green Bay (+0.242) and the Rams (+0.221). That's down from Detroit's 2024 mark of +0.247 — a real dip — but Detroit's *rank* in pass EPA/play didn't change: third in both years. It's also comfortably better than Detroit's final Ben-Johnson-plus-Goff season in 2023, when the Lions were fifth at +0.131.

The story that Detroit's passing offense fell off a cliff without its play-caller doesn't survive the leaderboard. Third in the league is third in the league.

## Goff's year-over-year numbers are fine

Jared Goff's regular-season passing lines:

| Season | Comp/Att | Yds   | TD | INT | Sacks | EPA/dropback | CPOE  |
| ------ | -------- | ----- | -- | --- | ----- | ------------ | ----- |
| 2023   | 407/635  | 4,575 | 30 | 12  | 30    | +0.111       | +1.27 |
| 2024   | 390/570  | 4,629 | 37 | 12  | 31    | +0.276       | +5.71 |
| 2025   | 393/616  | 4,564 | 34 | 8   | 38    | +0.174       | +1.78 |

Goff's 2025 was well off his 2024 peak, but on both EPA/dropback and CPOE it beat his final year under Johnson in 2023 — and his touchdown-to-interception ratio (34:8) was the best of the three seasons. The number that clearly got worse was sacks: 38 in 2025 versus 31 and 30 the two years prior — roughly an extra sack every month. That's not nothing, but it's not the shape of a quarterback who was "carried."

If the preseason claim was "Goff is a system quarterback and the system left," the response is that in year one without that system he posted +0.174 EPA/dropback and +1.78 CPOE — a solidly above-average passing season by both measures.

## Detroit's run game collapsed

This is where Detroit actually lost something. Detroit's team run EPA/play fell from **+0.069 in 2024 (5th in the NFL)** to **−0.041 in 2025 (24th)**.

The personnel didn't turn over — Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery were both back, at lighter workloads. Gibbs went from 250 carries at **+0.140 EPA/carry** in 2024 to 243 carries at **−0.011 EPA/carry** in 2025\. Montgomery went from 186 carries at **−0.047 EPA/carry** to 159 carries at **+0.003 EPA/carry** — essentially replacement-level either way, just fewer touches. The tandem that helped anchor one of the best rushing attacks in football in 2024 was a bottom-third-of-the-league unit in 2025.

That's the real Ben-Johnson-shaped hole in Detroit's offense. Not the passing chart. The rushing chart.

## Chicago's sack rate cratered

Chicago's offense was genuinely transformed in 2025: team pass EPA/play went from **−0.098 in 2024 (25th)** to **+0.089 (9th)**. Where does that jump actually come from?

Look at Caleb Williams' own dropback line:

| Season | Dropbacks | Sacks | Sack rate | EPA/dropback |
| ------ | --------- | ----- | --------- | ------------ |
| 2024   | 636       | 68    | 10.7%     | −0.089       |
| 2025   | 594       | 24    | 4.0%      | +0.071       |

Sacks fell from **68 to 24**, and sack rate dropped from 10.7% to 4.0% — one of the largest protection turnarounds a single offense produced this year. Williams also added seven touchdowns (20 → 27) while his interception total barely moved (6 → 7). Pass yardage rose too, from 3,541 to 3,942.

The lever the Bears pulled looks structural — protect the passer, get the ball out faster, finish more drives with scores — rather than a leap in ball-placement accuracy. The next section is where that distinction gets sharper.

## Williams' CPOE fell even as scoring rose

This is the finding that actually cuts against the offseason narrative. Williams' raw completion rate barely moved: 351-of-640 (54.8%) in 2024 to 330-of-596 (55.4%) in 2025 — a rounding error, not a leap. But CPOE — completion percentage over expected, which adjusts for depth of target and difficulty — went the opposite direction of the storyline:

- 2024 CPOE: **−0.10**
- 2025 CPOE: **−3.51**

Williams was already a below-average accuracy passer by CPOE in 2024\. He was dramatically further below average in 2025, even though his raw completion rate held roughly flat and his counting stats improved. That combination — steady raw completion rate, worsening CPOE — is consistent with an offense that schemed up easier, shorter, more structurally-friendly throws (through better protection and design) rather than one that made its quarterback a more accurate passer. Every marquee number that improved for Williams this year — touchdowns, sacks, EPA/dropback — improved because the situation around him changed, not because his ball placement did.

## The narrower version of both stories

Put the two halves together and the Ben Johnson narrative reduces to something more specific than "he made Goff" and "he'll fix Caleb."

In Detroit, the year-one loss without Johnson wasn't the passing game — still 3rd in EPA/play, Goff still turning in a career-caliber CPOE and EPA/dropback season — it was the run game, which fell from 5th to 24th in EPA/play with the same two backs getting fewer touches. In Chicago, the year-one gain with Johnson wasn't accuracy — Williams' CPOE fell from −0.10 to −3.51 — it was protection and finishing: sacks down from 68 to 24, touchdowns up from 20 to 27.

Neither of those is a small effect. But neither is the effect the offseason discourse pitched. If you thought Johnson was a quarterback-whisperer, the 2025 evidence points instead to an offensive-line-and-timing whisperer whose 2024 Detroit passing numbers were partly a run-game offense in disguise. That's still a valuable coach. It's just a different coach than the one the discourse drafted.