Caleb Williams threw for over 300 yards again on Sunday and it meant nothing.

That’s because, as he has done the past three weeks, the Bears’ rookie quarterback spent most of a 34-17 loss to the Lions playing from behind.

There were soft covers and no fixed stakes.

The Lions scored 20 points before the Bears could score a single one, handing them their ninth straight loss at Soldier Field on Sunday. The Bears had been shut out in the first half in each of their last three games and were down 53-0 overall when they jogged to the locker room. On Sunday they lost 27-14 to a Lions defense that had given up 48 points to the Bills a week ago.

The rest of the snaps were mostly meaningless, even for a rookie quarterback who needs to add all sorts of plays to his Rolodex. Williams hasn’t caught a lead since Week 11.

The circumstances the Bears put him in — and the circumstances he puts himself in — have clouded the most important question the team will have to ask at the end of the year: exactly where Williams is in his development.

He finished the game 26-for-40 for 334 yards, two touchdowns and a passer rating of 107.7. Only 20 quarterbacks in Bears history have ever posted a 107 passer rating, 334 yards and two touchdowns in a game.

However, in a game that was never close, that didn’t matter much.

“Every snap is valuable,” Williams said. “There are so many different situations that happen during games that you can learn from and that’s what I learned from this year.”

He’s definitely learned to throw the ball all over the field when there’s no fear of things getting worse. Williams trailed by more than a point for all but the first 9:23 of Sunday’s game. On Monday against the Vikings it was initially 9:56. The week before against the 49ers it was 13:21.

How will Williams learn to win in the NFL if he’s forgotten what it feels like to even play with a lead?

“It’s hard to build on things like that because you don’t want to start multiple games next year being down two points the whole game,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “That’s not how you want to play offensive football in this league. You have to be able to do the rock, play action and all those things.

“When you go two points behind, especially towards the end of the game, I honestly don’t know what you can really take from it.”

The Bears went down early after rookie receiver Rome Odunze fumbled the ball twice in the first quarter – the first after a fly-sweep handoff from Williams and the second after a 19-yard completion.

The Bears scored for the first time on a 1-yard pass to Kmet about midway through the second quarter and again with 39 seconds left in the first half when Williams hit receiver Keenan Allen down the right sideline for a 45-yard score met. He finished with 141 receiving yards, his season high and the most of any Bears receiver this year.

However, the Lions scored on six of their first seven possessions, with the only exception being a missed 65-yard field goal at the end of the first half.

Running back Jahmyr Gibbs, playing without running mate David Montgomery, ran for a one-yard touchdown in the first quarter. Jameson Williams followed a great play by Jared Goff with an 82-yard touchdown two minutes into the second quarter. With about a minute left in the half, the Bears failed to tackle Amon-Ra St. Brown on an eight-yard receiver screen, resulting in the touchdown.

All Williams could do the rest of the way was score points.

“Everything is always evaluated,” said interim coach Thomas Brown. “Of course I want to get off to a better start and get into the flow of the game. But here too it becomes difficult if you shoot yourself in the foot.”

Allen paused when asked about the value of a performance when the other team has a lead.

“You have moral victories, moral victories,” he said. “It’s good to score a goal. Obviously just being able to be productive on offense, getting better, Caleb being able to get more reps, seeing different things on defense and ultimately just being able to run “To get better this season.”

Williams has 3,271 passing yards this season, the sixth-most in franchise history and just three yards shy of Jay Cutler’s 2010 season. It’s still important that he takes every snap for the rest of this lost season. However, it’s up to the Bears to put him in realistic situations with those snaps, starting with Thursday night’s game against the Seahawks.

Otherwise, they’ll have to spend the offseason sorting through garbage time points and yards and figuring out what the quarterback can lean on in more competitive game situations.

“No matter how the defense plays, no matter what the plays are called for us on offense, we have to go out there and execute,” Williams said. “That’s the easiest way to put it down.