Ben Johnson finds Caleb Williams' biggest flaw and how they help him

While Caleb Williams' performance has fallen somewhere in the middle between awful and really good in preseason through the eyes of many, there's little doubt where he stands in coach Ben Johnson's eyes.

Johnson appeared on Fox Sports One's First Things First Monday and laid out a situation where his quarterback's inconsistencies are improving but success hinges on picking up one important QB basic, as well as getting help in one particular area from teammates.

"I don't even want to put a cap on it—he's got rare ability to throw the ball," Johnson said. "Now is it coming so fast that we feel like he's going to be at his ceiling this year? No, absolutely not. But he's getting better every day."

The place he needs help and part of the reason for his inconsistency remains not his arm but his feet.

"I think the biggest learning curve for him since we entered the building was being able to play the game and trust your feet," Johnson said. "That's been a little bit of a foreign concept.

"He wasn't trained that way as a college quarterback. He had tons of success being able to drop back and find the open guy and hit him in stride. Now you talk about the sacks being such a big part of the game and we can help eliminate those by getting the ball out of his hand in time and it's part of trusting his feet, hitching to the first progression, moving to the second and then the ticker has to go off in your head in terms of when do I need to throw this ball away or when do I need to extend the play on my own if we've got a clean pocket."

The perfect example of what Johnson mentioned was the sack taken against the Chiefs in the first half Friday, when Williams held it as the pocket held up, then panicked and ran into a sack by Chris Jones.

"Are we there yet?" Johnson asked, rhetorically. "No. There's still growth that he had. You saw it last game. We took a sack and we had pretty good protection but then there's some other clips in that same game there he's doing it right and it looked really darned good. And so we've got to get that out of him a little bit more and we're going to be just fine."

Coaches have been talking about Williams' footwork since OTAs in May. If they get him focused on this, the other way they get more from their QB is simply improved offensive line play.

"It still starts there and ends there with offensive football," Johnson said. "I don't think that's a secret. I know the game has changed over the years but you still win games in the trenches. And I know that modern football has maybe gone away from the running gam ae little bit more toward the passing game but that doesn't matter. You need to be able to establish the line of scrimmage, play on their side of the ball, the defense's side of the ball when you're running it and then on offense in the passing game be able to pass protect for your quarterback."

He's not displeased here despite uncertainty at left tackle throughout camp.

"I'm talking about the left tackle, there's been a battle that we've gone back and forth on," Johnson said of Braxton Jones battling Theo Benedet, Ozzy Trapilo and Kiran Amegadjie. "I think I feel good about the direction that we're going, too, early in the season here, but that's something we've got to keep our eye on there.

"If we can run the ball effectively, which we plan to do, and we can protect a little bit better than we did last year here, then that's really the best case scenario for Caleb's success as well."

It sounds simple. It sounds far simpler than it really is when getting the ball snapped and handed off right remains an issue this far into camp.