Dan Campbell told Lions' defense about tendency Caleb Williams shows as a runner

When quarterbacks become runners, defenses have a challenge on their hands. Some quarterbacks take advantage of any hesitancy, with fake-slides and what not. On Thanksgiving Day, Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams didn't appreciate a hit he took from Detroit Lions linebacker Jack Campbell along the sideline after he had stopped short of going out of bounds.

Williams is not the first quarterback to take offense to being hit like a normal football player when the situation presents itself (namely, as a runner when in-pocket protections no longer apply), and he won't be the last.

As a refresher, here's a clip of the play from last Thursday.

The Lions picked up a tendency Caleb Williams shows as a runner

A huge part of weekly game-planning for coaches is noticing tendencies the upcoming opponent shows. Bigger picture schematic tendencies are obvious, but what a player does in certain situations can be just as important to find.

On this week's episode of his podcast, Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown revealed how Lions head coach Dan Campbell pointed out a tendency Williams shows as a runner near the sideline.

“The craziest part is before the game, in our team meeting, Dan was talking to us, and he was showing clips of Caleb going out of bounds, going in, then going out. He said, ‘No you don’t. No you don’t,’” St. Brown said. “It was clips of him doing that and he was like, ‘If he does this, we’re going to hit his a**. I already warned the refs, the refs know.’ So when it happened in the game, I already knew there was no flag. Jack hit his a**, we were like, ‘Yeah!’ Everyone on the Bears was like, ‘What? Where’s the flag?’ We’re like, ‘He went out, he came back in and took it.’”

So last Thursday's situation was apparently not the first time this season Williams stopped short of going out of bounds as a runner. Skeptics might say Campbell was coaching the Lions' defense to cross the line, but Jack Campbell made a clean hit in the field of play that Williams invited by getting cute when he had a clear path to get out of bounds. If he keeps going, it seems possible he would've been hit on the out of bounds line and gotten a 15-yard penalty.

Campbell, and/or one or more of the Lions' defensive coaches, saw how Williams doesn't just go out of bounds when he gets to the sideline as a runner, making himself vulnerable to being hit-and hit legally, by the way. A young quarterback failing to be smart about taking hits as a runner doesn't make him exempt from being hit, even if Williams carried that entitled vibe in his attempted call-out of Jack Campbell.