I actually don’t feel he plays down to lesser competition but rather plays too hard to the point of recklessness because he wants to bury a team in the 1st quarter. He sees the Bears as a team he can experiment on and help pad his teammates’ stats and thus looks for deeper routes while ignoring layups.
His one primary exception is New England because of their “infamous” defensive prowess. He seems to almost feel even better just picking them apart like Brady used to do to the Bills. Effectively, he wants the Pats to do everything but still fail while he just finds their holes and exploits them mercilessly. Other lesser teams he seems more interested in just blowing them up versus giving cruel and unusual punishment.