Caleb deteriorating, regressing. What to do?

You answered you own question.  

This staff can't develop him.  That's a proven fact by now.  So you fire these guys right now.

If they refuse to fire these guys in-season, then yeah I'd start Bagent the rest of the year and start fresh in '25 with a new staff and OL.

This is the mature topic to discuss.

It is not that Caleb Williams forgot how to play QB, but rather the opposing teams have figured out our offense and how to defend it and our OL is pitiful. Caleb Williams can play quarterback. We've seen it.

We know what to do about the OL (several high round draft picks and FA).

We know what to do about Eberflus (fire his ass).

Now we have to save the future of the franchise.

Let's frame the discussion about Caleb:

1) He has displayed enough several times to prove that he CAN BE the franchise QB of the future. Yes there are issues (deep ball being 99% of my concern), but I'm convinced that we have our QB.

2) Caleb has a more than sufficient supporting cast of skill players. Moore, Allen, Odunze and Kmet need to be kept together. I do want us to extend Allen.

3) If Caleb goes out there and gets the crap kicked out of him every week it is going to break him mentally. It cannot be expected of a rookie QB to keep everything together and learn the NFL while getting sacked 9 times per game.

4) Caleb suffering a severe injury like a torn ligament puts him on the shelf for one year and dramatically increases the probability of him busting.

If I had my way I would radically change the offense to 2 TE sets, PA, I Formation, 3 (not 4) WR sets and leave RoJo in the backfield to block, throw slots and dammit get Kmet 5 to 10 receptions per game.

We do not have the OL to leave 5 guys on the line. We need 6 or 7 and then we have to rely on the talent of the skill players to get open.

I think that adapting the offense to that improves the blocking and therefore decreases the probability of Caleb getting injured. I do not like the optics of benching Caleb for Bagent.

Well, since we can't go back in time and do what I wanted initially (trade down and put massive resources into the OL/DL, keep Fields another year) then we're left with what to do now. This is going about how I figured it would go TBH, we've seen the movie several times now and for the life of me I can't understand why a professional GM doesn't know that nothing will work without a solid OL - nothing. Everything will look bad, the players will get frustrated mentally and lose confidence, the team dynamic will erode, and guys will start developing bad habits.

It's that last bit that makes me think the best move right now, for Caleb's development as an NFL QB, is to let Bagent play the next few weeks. I genuinely feel that last year when Fields watched Bagent play efficient football (less the turnover tsunami of course), that something clicked for Justin and he came back looking like a different player. He didn't "light it up" or anything, rather he played smart football, took less sacks, got the ball to his playmakers, controlled the game with his arm/legs, and generally played what I would call "winning football". We went 5-2, then he went to Pitt and did the same thing and started 4-2 over there before being replaced by Russ. I don't want to relitigate JF1, he's gone and CW is our guy now, rather I point to this as one proof point that a guy can benefit from sitting and watching someone else play the game. Side benefit, maybe we don't "David Carr" Caleb - who is on track to approach the all time sacks taken record of 76 set by Carr. We all know what happened to him, another #1 overall pick.

I do not believe that Caleb would lose confidence or anything like that. The coaches simply need to handle it right and tell him "Look, the OL is struggling with injuries and you are the franchise, we cannot risk your long term health and growth so use this time to watch and learn and make no mistake - you are our guy". Optics don't matter here IMO.