During the second half of Thursday’s game at Detroit, Bears quarterback Caleb Williams took a low hit along the sideline from Lions linebacker Jack Campbell. Williams’s left knee buckled, and it initially looked like he might have suffered a significant knee injury. After an evaluation in the medical tent, he returned to the game without missing an offensive snap.
After the game, Williams was asked by reporters whether it was a clean play.
“Um, knee’s fine,” Williams said without directly answering the question. “Yeah, I — that play was funky. Just put it that way. I don’t really — you know, I didn’t really appreciate the play. He just kind of dove straight at my knee. So I didn’t really get that. Definitely kind of frustrated about that one, just ‘cause you know, whatever. Yeah, knee’s good. Nothing wrong with it. Think I just got a bruise. But the play was — the play was funky.”
Here’s the play. It was funky, but it was also clean. When a quarterback becomes a runner, a hit at or below the knee is legal.
In this case, Williams apparently tried to do a Lamar Jackson-style freeze/stop, with Campbell flying by and Williams gaining more yards. It didn’t work.
Once a quarterback leaves the pocket, he sheds certain protections. Once he crosses the line of scrimmage, he loses all protections that don’t otherwise apply to running backs.
Campbell was permitted to hit him low. For that reason, Williams should have just gotten out of bounds. More importantly, he shouldn’t have tried to make a move on the sideline in the hopes of making Campbell miss.
The fact that Campbell didn’t miss is on Williams, not Campbell.
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