House of Dysfunction, Part II: Inside the Chicago Bears' "rigged trial" at No. 1 overall
“The Caleb Williams draft pick was the most embarrassing lack of a process — a fair, impartial process to scouting — that I’ve ever seen in my life." Take a seat inside Chicago's draft meetings.
Read Part I here.
The worst football moments of Drake Maye’s collegiate football life were plastered on the screen for all to breathe in. This was no accident. Multiple people inside this 2024 draft meeting say they knew exactly what Ryan Poles was up to. “He’s not sneaky,” recalls one scout, “and he thinks he is.” The Chicago Bears general manager, it appeared, was implanting the worst possible first impression he could inside the minds of his personnel men.
It wasn’t pretty. Under constant duress, he completed less than half of his passes vs. Clemson. He ran for his life vs. Miami.
Clicker in hand, at the center of the room, Poles repeatedly hit rewind on errant passes and it didn’t take long for those echoes of “Geez!” to turn into outright laughter. Poles and his confidants were not interested in sparking a substantive conversation about the North Carolina quarterback. This draft meeting resembled a bully in the high school cafeteria seeking toadies — any veneer of scouting objectivity was shed.
Maye escaped free runners, threw at awkward angles, sailed incompletions. At times, the spiral of his ball was off. Other times, the receiver broke in and the ball was thrown out. All funky plays were magnified and mocked to make it appear as if this is exactly who he’d become as a pro quarterback.
Poles chimed in.
“This tape makes my chest tight,” one source recalls the GM saying.
All but a select few scouts broke out in laughter.
One brave soul did speak up. Chris White, the team’s assistant director of pro scouting that spring, called out Poles. “We’re dragging this kid through the mud,” he said. North Carolina’s receiving corps was hurting that final ’23 season. White asked his boss to show another game out of fairness. So, he did. Maye started gunning NFL-level throws downfield and White spoke up again. “I like that there,” he said. Two narratives were now clashing. Poles didn’t hit rewind on these plays. Inside the room, one scout recalls the mood turning tense.
After negative plays, Poles made a wry comment: “Dirt ball there” or “You like that, too?”
Laughter picked back up. The team’s area scout, Ryan Cavanaugh, flatly stated that he didn’t believe Maye was a very good player and Poles jumped in to reset the temperature of the room. “I agree,” he said.
Eventually, the GM set the clicker down. “This guy,” he repeated, “makes my chest tight watching this.”
Case closed. Maye was stacked out of the first round.
“They made fun of him,” says one Bears scout in the room. “They laughed. The GM laughed Drake Maye off the screen, and cut the tape off.”
Jayden Daniels wasn’t stacked much higher. The Heisman Trophy winner who filleted defenses with horsepower the sport hadn’t seen since Lamar Jackson was never a serious contender for the No. 1 pick. Not once, sources in the room say, did Poles open up the floor to ask a simple question: Who’s a better quarterback: Caleb Williams or Jayden Daniels? “Jayden Daniels was clearly — clearly — a better quarterback,” says one scout. “If he didn’t want to go with Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels was clearly a better quarterback to anyone with an eye.”
And when it was time to discuss Williams, the tenor in the room changed drastically. His film was massaged in a manner to present the USC quarterback at his absolute best. Nobody dared to chuckle. The Bears didn’t dissect his wretched performance against Notre Dame on tape, only discussing that three-interception, 48-20 defeat through rose-colored glasses. No magnifying glass was panned over this quarterback’s flaws.
To those seeking a vibrant debate, these draft meetings were a farce.
“The quarterback process? I would not even call it a process,” says one scout in the room. “The Caleb Williams draft pick was the most embarrassing lack of a process — a fair, impartial process to scouting — that I’ve ever seen in my life. There wasn’t any type of actual comparison on a fair slate to which quarterback is actually better.
“They had it all lined up. It was a rigged trial.”
Reality is, the decision was likely made long before the decision was even discussed.
Poles was struck by Cupid’s arrow during the 2022 college season. By the time Chicago landed the No. 1 overall pick in 2024, roles reversed. This was not an NFL Organization prodding and investigating and interviewing a College Football Player for the No. 1 overall pick. The threat of Williams pulling an ‘04 Eli Manning or ‘83 John Elway was real, so the GM appeared to play by the quarterback’s rules. When critical thinking was needed most inside Halas Hall, it was instead purged from the building.
One scout likens that Maye scene to a “pack of hyenas” all trying to keep their jobs.
Anyone who steps out of line and speaks the truth, he adds, puts a target on their back.
Which created blind spots for the Chicago Bears.
Not only were five other quarterbacks in a historic draft class outright dismissed. When red flags were discovered, those red flags flatly were not discussed out loud in meetings.
In Part II of our series, Go Long continues to chat with Bears sources — past and present — to guide you through a draft that witnesses paint as a slap in the face to everyone who fills Soldier Field on Sundays. Several other GMs and execs around the NFL share their own odd interactions with Williams. And we explore what easily could become the next all-time “What if?” in Bears history — the Jayden Daniels whiff — because, thus far, the juxtaposition in how the two players work is jarring.
Finally, we’ll examine this new union: Williams and new head coach Ben Johnson.
The honeymoon period is over. Game No. 1 is closing in.
Years from now, when all legacies for all six quarterbacks taken in Round 1 of the 2024 NFL Draft are written in stone and the lessons are obvious for all 32 teams, a few private words spoken by the Bears GM may ring loudest. Words two team sources will never forget.
Into December ‘23, right as the Bears’ brass shifted its focus from the season to the QB class — to Caleb Williams — they recall Poles saying out loud: “If I don’t take him, the media will kill me.”
“That is fireable,” says one Bears scout. “If you’re making picks for the media, then you might as well have Mel Kiper be GM. That’s just ridiculous. That’s not a general manager. The general manager is supposed to be the captain of the ship. He’s supposed to be the best evaluator on the staff. I cannot believe a general manager would actually say that out loud.”
There are teams that maniacally dissect every conceivable option when presented with the first overall pick in the NFL draft, teams that encourage 12-round brawls in draft meetings to ensure the best player is selected. Argument is a must.
Then, there’s the Bears.
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The Caleb Train
He’s a man on a mission walking these halls. Head down, face in the phone, you’re lucky to get a hollow “hey” in passing. Employees in several departments paint the same picture of Ryan Poles, their boss, inside Halas Hall. They describe the GM as transactional. Unless you’ve got a title above his own — unless there’s a service you can provide him — Poles cannot be bothered.
Stranger than any aristocratic insolence is what Poles obsesses over on that tiny screen.
Those in coaching, scouting, equipment, marketing, digital and the support staff insist this GM is terminally online. He scrolls and scrolls to get a pulse for what narratives are building in the public sphere. “Did you see this post on Twitter?!” he asks those close to him. Poles is “infatuated,” one vice president says, with what the Bears’ own social media team is tweeting… not tweeting… right down to who’s featured in specific photographs. He carves out time in his schedule to pitch ideas to the team’s media department. Optics reign supreme.
“I’m like, ‘How about getting an idea for getting a fucking first down,’” this source says.
OK, fine. The dystopia is here. One scout realizes the younger generation lives on a phone and admits Poles isn’t any different than most adults in their 30s. Countless millennials try to sell a perfectly manicured life to the masses. That doesn’t make it any less weird to see his boss pushing narratives that don’t necessarily mirror reality. Cameras are everywhere shooting the Bears’ in-house TV show, “1920 Football Drive,” and Poles ensures his fingerprints are all over the final product. “Crafting the narrative,” says this scout, “and editing things to make it look the way he wants it to look.” This all began on Jan. 31, 2022 at his introductory presser.
These Bears, he promised, would “take the north and never give it back.”
“Of all the people I’ve worked with,” one scout says, “and I’ve worked with a lot of different people at different levels — he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying. He pretends to. That was very cringe.”
One GM for an AFC team who knows scouts back in Kansas City, where Poles’ NFL career began, has heard good things. Well… other than one small detail. “They thought he was full of shit,” he says, “taking credit for Mahomes when he was interviewing.” The Bears, who infamously passed on the Texas Tech gunslinger, devoured whatever this GM hopeful was peddling. And it did not take long for the new boss to see a Mahomes of his own in the form of a USC quarterback hopscotching through Pac-12 defenses that 2022 season.
This was a match made in heaven.
The GM who seems to care deeply about media perception fell hard for the quarterback all of us in the media knighted a generational talent.
After going 3-14 in Year 1, scouts are convinced Poles would’ve taken Williams No. 1 if he was draft eligible. He was not. Nor was Poles interested in either Alabama’s Bryce Young or Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud. Especially the latter. They quickly breezed through his clips. “Because,” one scout adds, “he had an Ohio State helmet. He said, ‘I can’t take another quarterback from Ohio State. The media would kill me.’ Stroud wasn’t given a day in court.” Rather, Poles was tantalized by Florida’s Manchurian quarterback Anthony Richardson. After viewing Richardson’s stunning 81-yard touchdown run vs. LSU in a draft meeting, two sources recall Poles joking he’d walk to the podium with his balls “in a wheelbarrow” to take the QB, a nod to the South Park meme. The Bears’ QB board then was 1.) Richardson; 2.) Young; 3.) Stroud.
Granted, visions of Williams were dancing in his head. Poles dealt the No. 1 pick to the Carolina Panthers, bagged wide receiver D.J. Moore in addition to four draft picks, rolled with Justin Fields for another season and — as the Panthers bottomed out — excitement only grew. And grew. And all sources interviewed believe the GM’s mind was made up early as December 2023.
“Poles saw a lot of similarities to Mahomes,” says one Bears scout. “And so because of those similarities, he started to really have an infatuation with Caleb. Throughout the year there was a lot of work done behind the scenes. He definitely was all-in on Caleb from the moment that there was an opportunity for us to acquire him. That was the guy he knew he wanted. I don’t know how much time he spent personally on the rest of the guys.”
When scouts showed up for the 2024 draft meetings to discuss one of the most consequential decisions in team history, the proceedings felt like a sham. Perhaps the team’s quartet of Poles, assistant GM Ian Cunningham, senior director of player personnel Jeff King and director of player personnel Trey Koziol held their own summits to engage in robust debate behind closed doors. It was obvious early that contrasting voices would be treated as white noise. A laughable “dog and pony show” is how one personnel man described meetings amongst the whole group.
These Bears zeroed in on one QB, and one QB only.
“If there was dissension?” he says. “There wasn’t a door opened for dissension.”
Every quarterback has a unique skillset, the scout continues. Some can throw it 70 yards. Some are magicians off-script. Some are surgical in the red zone. Whereas Poles was quick to hit play on Williams’ highlight reel throws, the other quarterbacks’ negatives were presented first. So even if he got around to their positives, that first impression stuck. All of scouting has an air of subjectivity — it’s on the GM holding that remote control not to taint the pool, so independent thought is welcomed. Not shunned.
Bears scouts walked into the room knowing precisely what Poles, the man who controls their livelihoods, wanted to hear.
He presented Williams as a transcendent talent, one scout says, who could be better than Mahomes. Those who disagreed started to feel like they’d be attacked for suggesting otherwise.
On one hand, Poles preaches collaboration and encourages everyone to speak up.
“But,” one scout says, “I don’t know how much he listens. He’ll make the decision on what he thinks is best and knows he wants to have buy-in. So, he will craft a narrative, speak to certain people and use his position to get people to change the way that they see something so their final opinion is in line with what he thinks.
“He doesn’t listen to those other viewpoints.”
One time, a position coach completely changed his opinion on a prominent player, and it wasn’t a matter of organically seeing the light. This scout saw Poles “manipulate” and “taint” how that coach viewed that player. Early on, Poles leaned into Cunningham. One colleague believed the assistant GM did an effective job of covering up Poles’ deficiencies and calls him the better leader of the two. Cunningham would challenge scouts and Poles alike. His voice has faded a bit. King is now viewed as the man who has the GM’s ear and a respected future GM himself. But overall? Poles, scouts say, repels dissent.
“He is not a leader,” says one Bears scout in that ’24 room. “I’ve worked with people who are leaders that worked and motivated you. They’ve got a human element where they get to know you. You want to do a good job for them. He is ill-equipped for the job. He doesn’t possess any of that. He likes the people who kiss up to him, as opposed to somebody who can smell that out and wouldn’t want those people around him. A good leader — a good GM — has people keep you in check. They should disagree with you and challenge you. He doesn’t like that.”
That’s Howie Roseman’s modus operandi in Philadelphia. His staff is full of experienced evaluators who’ll force him to use a different part of his brain. Bill Belichick, for all of his gruffness, genuinely listens. He may like your idea. He may hate it. But you don’t feel patronized. The tales of close friends Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur and Mike McDaniel clashing behind the scenes are legendary. Those marathon sessions that dragged on for hours innovated the sport. Force yourself to think outside the box and a breakthrough is inevitable.
The best businesses, period, demand all employees in all departments to speak up, make their opinion known and justify that opinion with a strong Why.
Only fearlessness launches a perennial loser in the NFL into contention.
None of that existed the spring of ’24 in Chicago.
There was no healthy reflex to push back when Williams’ strengths were magnified and his weaknesses ignored. It behooved scouts to rubber-stamp Poles’ opinion with glistening grades for the sake of job security. One likens such “group scouting” to a freight train steadily picking up steam January… to February… to March… to draft day on April 25. “If you’re a yes man,’ you can stay in the NFL for a long time,” he adds. “That’s what that building is: Yes Men.”
Each quarterback’s area scout was given time to detail all pros and cons. All basic background work was done. Each presentation, however, felt like a formality. A brief detour. Inevitably, the discussion weaved back to Williams.
LSU’s Daniels and North Carolina’s Maye were not legit contenders for the top spot.
“Neither one of those guys was even a consideration,” one scout in the room recalls. “There. Was. No. Process. The grades that they had on Caleb were off the charts.”
The only resistance amid the laughfest came from one of the team’s top evaluators: Chris White. And when White advocated for that Tar Heel quarterback being mocked on the screen, he was completely shut down. Poles appeared “annoyed” and “pissed off,” one source says, that Maye was even brought up. The tape was eventually shut off — for good.
“The guy was basically announced as a joke,” one scout adds. “Poles is basically saying Drake can’t even play in the NFL.
“Chris was the only one with the balls to call out the truth. Instead of taking that — which you should as a general manager — and saying, ‘My best evaluator is trying to tell me something,’ Poles really made everything harder on him. Which is the opposite of what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a discussion in there. There was none.”
Not surprisingly, White is no longer with the Bears.
He’s now the director of pro personnel in Washington, a team feeling good about its quarterback decision.
Daniels was no source of hearty discussion. “Zero debate for Daniels,” recalls one source who remembers the Bears discussing the bony picture of Daniels’ elbow that went viral. Poles ‘n co. reasoned he was too skinny to hold up in the pros and cited all the 5-star talent on LSU’s offense. Ironic considering the same people were laughing at Maye trying to survive with a skimpy supporting cast his final season. As Poles turned the LSU tape off, the GM noted that he believed Daniels’ barnstorming Heisman season — 3,812 passing yards, 1,134 rushing yards, 50 total TDs, four interceptions — was an outlier. Daniels wasn’t nearly as productive the four prior seasons across two schools. Cunningham saw RGIII. There was no conversation at all about Daniels’ accuracy, or arm strength, or athleticism, or ability to cycle through progressions. Because in their eyes, this scout adds, “he was incomparable to Caleb.”
Even Daniels’ camp noticed the Bears were drunk on everything Caleb Williams. The LSU quarterback turned down a Top 30 invite to Chicago because the team’s interest felt so insincere. His camp could tell Poles’ mind was made up and he didn’t want to be a puppet. “The entire time,” one source close to Daniels explains, “the temperature of the whole situation was to take their guy at one. We see the writing on the wall. We don’t want to have this whole big dog and pony show.”
Not that it really mattered how the quarterbacks were ranked, but the Bears slotted J.J. McCarthy ahead of Daniels at No. 2. King loved the Michigan quarterback, but others reasoned he was too small and hammered him for working with mental coaches in college.
Oregon’s Bo Nix and Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. were footnotes.
The Bears brass dismissed Nix as a scheme quarterback who threw short and was afraid of making mistakes downfield. They believed he was too tightly wound in interviews and was bound to cripple himself with over-analysis at the pro level. “They didn’t think he was going to be a good quarterback,” one scout says. The Bears hardly did any work on Penix. They didn’t like his throwing motion or his injury-riddled stint at Indiana. (“He was not in play at all,” says one scout. “Zero.”)
Chicago’s board: 1.) Williams; 2.) McCarthy; 3.) Daniels; 4.) Maye; 5.) Nix; and Penix, listed sixth, was lumped into the same tier as Spencer Rattler and Michael Pratt.
Honestly? Everybody else in the room could’ve rioted against Williams and sources believe Poles still would’ve pulled the trigger. He was that convicted. And in a roundabout way, one scout respects his old boss for it. GMs typically only get one opportunity to draft a quarterback in the first round. Let alone first overall. If you believe in your heart that Caleb Williams is the answer, by golly, you better take him. It’d be impossible to sleep at night seeing him excel for another team.
The problem was how the GM arrived at that decision. Flaws spilled freely through the cracks.
One coach who interviewed for the Bears’ OC job in January recommended the team sign a veteran to mentor Williams. They did not.
That hideous USC-Notre Dame game was not totally ignored. They talked it out. But multiple sources recall Poles spinning Williams’ worst collegiate night into a positive. He said that this is exactly how NFL teams tried to defend Mahomes in the NFL and the fact that Williams dealt with this in college put him ahead of the curve. Work ethic was never scrutinized. The only time one scout remembers Williams being questioned at all was when they addressed Williams crying in Mom’s arms. Even this was sold as hyper-competitiveness. (“He cares so much.”) The fingernail painting? (“He’s his own man. He’s not scared.”)
Adds this scout: “If you were to say anything negative about Caleb in that room, you were done.”
On to the Combine, Williams refused all medical testing. A decision that was championed in the press. The No. 1 storyline that week, of course, was whether or not he’d warm up to the Bears. One visual sticks with a Bears scout from the team’s 18-minute interview with the quarterback in Indianapolis — the QB showed up without a notebook. That’s uncommon. When asked who his hero is, Williams said “Aaron Rodgers” and one source on-hand says Bears owner George McCaskey looked horrified. Worst of all, Williams was the only quarterback Chicago interviewed who drew up their play incorrectly on the board.
Post-Indy, it was time for Williams’ one and only Top 30 visit. Initially, he cancelled his planned Bears visit to instead train in Florida. Poles called allies, dejected. After a week delay, he headed to Halas Hall.
Several coaches and scouts were underwhelmed.
“It was really bad,” one source recalls, “and everybody was talking about it.”
He didn’t take the Wonderlic or S2 cognitive tests. Many players quit the latter after Go Long reported specific scores in April 2023. Williams did take an Athletic Intelligent Quotient (AIQ) test for the Bears and scored poorly. He met with Poles, met with the coaches and did work on the field. Typically, prospects on these Top 30 visits also undergo testing with the Bears’ performance/sports science team but Poles said Williams wouldn’t be doing any of that. This was a recruiting pitch, after all. Within the organization — quietly — a handful in-house came away thinking Williams would be a bust. At least two offensive coaches graded him a four on a 1-to-8 scale.
If the Bears were a franchise open to real debate than they would’ve huddled up for tough conversations after Williams departed. But this was not a real interview. The Bears’ No. 1 goal was to please the USC QB.
“There’s a reason why he has processing issues,” says one scout. “There’s a reason why he held onto the ball longer than any quarterback in college coming out, and it was never discussed. None of these things were discussed. There was nothing negative.
“We took him because the media said to take him.”
Right on through Chicago selecting Williams, sources in the room emphatically state that red flags were not properly examined. They say the Bears never delved into his questionable work ethic, handled very real on-field concerns with kid gloves and — whereas medical issues are discussed at length on all other prospects — nothing ever came up in all Williams talk.
Multiple personnel men tell Go Long they saw evidence that Williams has dyslexia. The matter, however, was never a topic in draft meetings.
“Completely hidden,” adds one scout.
One source in the front office believes Poles was in so deep by the time he discovered the condition that it was best to act like it didn’t exist. Go full ostrich mode. Nor does one personnel man believe head coach Matt Eberflus was privy to this intel because he says it would’ve been smart for Poles to have a sacrificial lamb handy in case Year 1 went haywire. Word did not spread to coaches until late in the ’24 season. Of course, it’s a bottom-line business. You’d also think the GM would have every incentive for Williams to succeed out of the gate as well. Eberflus did not return Go Long’s messages.
If Poles openly discussed the condition internally ahead of the draft, there’s risk the news could’ve leaked to the public.
A leak could’ve spooked Williams.
A leak could’ve also applied immediate pressure on the GM himself in Chicago.
Go Long asked one Bears source, who says he saw evidence of dyslexia, if there’s any chance Poles somehow missed it himself before the pick. Perhaps, it evaded his purview? This person immediately interrupted me to say such a scenario is “impossible.” A word he repeats six times because, he notes, the GM has access to everything. “It’s not even feasible to imagine a general manager not having access to every single player’s medical,” he adds.
All teams, Chicago included, routinely discuss the health of players bound to go in the 200s, let alone No. 1 overall. Sources we spoke to never remember such dialogue on Williams.
If Poles knew, three different sources — a coach, a scout, an exec on the business side — aren’t sure if he even relayed the information to ownership.
“If anyone else found out about that,” one Bears scout says, “that would change everything. They want to keep this secret. They think they’re very sneaky, very cute. If that gets out — with them sitting there at the first pick — now you’re going to be the GM who took a dyslexic quarterback. In the open. He’s hoping that nobody knows about this. And I don’t think the owners were told. I’m pretty sure they don’t even know that their GM took a dyslexic quarterback who had a horrible interview and red flags that were abundant on tape.”
To understand how the ’24 draft and ’24 season spiraled out of control so terribly fast, consider the GM’s rise.
Poles was not the bleary-eyed area scout surviving on three hours of sleep, 6 ½ cups of coffee and Chick-Fil-A one county highway to the next. This foundation callouses the mind and helps GMs truly listen to everyone beneath them. Above all, there’s immeasurable value to grading prospects on a blank slate because there’s zero answers to the test. Area scouts watch a player compete in practice, play in games, investigate character, sift through all BS spewed by college coaches hyping up their guys and effectively put your own reputation on the line with a report. You’ll hit. You’ll miss. Countless scouts fall flat on their face and realize this leap of faith is not for them. The best develop instincts that warrant a string of promotions with a front office.
In the NFL, every area scout submits a grade first. Then, the national scouts. Then, the directors. Then, the scouting coordinator (in theory) can see what everyone already has put into the system and grade somewhere in the middle to appear correct.
In KC, Poles was not the first person to grade players. A handful of Chiefs scouts were shocked he got the keys to an NFL roster. The former Boston College lineman spent one year as a scouting assistant for Scott Pioli (2009) before vaulting into a college scouting coordinator role in 2010. After five years, he received three more director-level promotions before taking over the Bears.
“He never proved that he was a scout,” says one personnel man who has worked with Poles. “The only way that you should ever possess the power to make picks is if you’ve shown this. He never did that. He had all the answers to the test. He could put a grade higher or lower. Frankly, my wife can do that. Then, he got promoted to director. He never had his ass hanging out there. He never showed he could evaluate.”
Another scout disagrees. He believes you can mature in different ways and cites John Dorsey as one of Poles’ mentors in KC. To him, the issue is more so Poles’ fixation on “traits” and “potential,” a philosophy shared by ex-Chiefs scouting colleague Chris Ballard. (Coincidentally, as the Colts’ GM, Ballard selected Richardson fourth overall in the ’23 draft.) Blunders in Chicago have multiplied. Claiming former first-rounder Alex Leatherwood off waivers despite the warnings of several on staff that he’d be a cancer. Paying up for guard Nate Davis. Dealing a second-round pick for Chase Claypool. Drafting Velus Jones, a 25-year-old wide receiver. Paying Tremaine Edmunds $18 million per year instead of Roquan Smith $20 million. Letting David Montgomery, the epitome of culture, walk. Choosing Zacch Pickens on the defensive line 13 picks before Byron Young. Drafting Yale offensive lineman Kiran Amegadjie 75th overall. On and on.
The nature of his scouting path — devoid of life in Marriotts, putting his rep on the line — may skew Poles more toward that group-scouting consensus. That traits gene gravitated Poles toward the ultimate traits quarterback.
And time’s forever a flat circle in Chicago. In rhythm and timing, the spring of 2024 mirrored 2017. Seven years prior, the Bears settled on UNC’s Mitch Trubisky as their quarterback over Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes far too quickly. A thorough organizational autopsy would’ve advised the Bears to keep an open mind into April. Other teams considered all options at the position. Other teams, oddly enough, couldn’t pierce that thick layer of insulation around Williams.
Talk to these GMs, these execs, these scouts and it’s obvious the Bears would’ve viewed this quarterback class through a totally different lens if they weren’t so myopic.
Because here’s another scene from the Combine in Indy.
At one point, Williams walked into a room to sit down with a different GM and this GM — like every football consumer in the country — was enamored by the quarterback’s supreme physical gifts. Athleticism. Arm talent. Extending plays. “Caleb,” he says, “is built in a lab. An unbelievable talent.” But then, he pauses. When this boss embarked on his quarterback search, he resisted temptation. All of those exhilarating highlights are football crack, and he refused to get hooked.
“The quarterback position,” he cautions, “it’s not just about that.”
Watching film, one first impression can mesmerize. Poles knew this.
But a first impression that’s face to face is much more powerful.
Strange encounters
Up close, the general manager of this team got to know all of the top quarterback prospects in the 2023 and 2024 drafts. This effervescent longtime scout was also on the hunt. He, conversely, values the “blink reaction” meeting anyone in life.
And this GM had no clue what to expect when he made eye contact and started asking quarterbacks questions. He prepared himself for disappointment in this new NIL world, and was certifiably shocked.
Whispers of “entitlement” and “arrogance” surrounded C.J. Stroud. Two minutes into conversation? “You’re obsessed with him. There’s a confidence to him. A swagger. But there’s an honesty.” When the Buckeye QB discussed his faith — what he believes to his core — it wasn’t forced or rehearsed. The GM could see how Stroud’s honesty might’ve rubbed other NFL types the wrong way. “But,” he adds, “that’s a dude you want to go battle with.”
Alabama’s Bryce Young first appeared programmed, as if he had planned for this interview his entire life. Young was so unbelievably locked in that the GM wondered if he was getting an agent-powered robot or the true artifact. “But that’s who he is. He can be a representative of this organization.”
Onto the 2024 class, he heard “weird” tales around the meditating J.J. McCarthy, but when they sat down? “Whoa, the presence is real. You can feel that alpha. You can feel he’s a real football dude. This guy can lead.” Both Bo Nix and Michael Penix Jr. transferred, became faces of their respective programs, and rallied everyone around them in a special manner. Nix was a diligent worker to the bone. Everyone who knew Penix raved about his charisma. That, too, was evident.
Drake Maye was more laidback. He didn’t exude alpha, yet was obviously “an awesome young man.” The GM saw shades of Justin Herbert.
And, oh, Jayden Daniels? The GM tried to catch him off-guard by telling the quarterback he had a late-round grade on him at Arizona State. Then, he explodes at LSU? What happened? Daniels looked him dead in the eye and said he’s been dominating since high school. “That’s who he is,” the GM says. “I felt it.”
All of the above treated an interview as an interview.
They matched the GM’s energy. They were respectful.
Then, there was the quarterback ballyhooed more than them all.
“Caleb? When I say one of the worst, there’s this natural arrogance, this entitlement to him. All these other guys that I just mentioned are top-tier quarterbacks and they know it. They had a presence right away you’re like, ‘Oh shit.’ Jayden Daniels came in really confident, but he was on an interview. It’s a difference.
“With Caleb, it wasn’t an interview. It was like somebody told him he had to come in there. The way he answered the questions. The way he carried himself. If you’re picking first overall, second overall — you know how talented he is — but that would’ve made you uncomfortable like, ‘God damn.’ After you see the way Jayden Daniels came in there, the way Bo Nix came in there, the way Michael Penix came in there, JJ McCarthy, and then that? Ugh. After that, I kept trying to go back and try to figure out, ‘Have I met somebody like this that’s been a really successful NFL quarterback? A franchise changing NFL quarterback?’ I couldn’t come up with anybody.”
Arrogance isn’t anything new at the position. Cam Newton was technically “arrogant” from Day 1, this GM says. But there was an obvious lack of self-awareness and entitlement to Williams. You, as a GM, needed to impress Him. There’s no way he would’ve taken Williams if he owned the No. 1 pick because he did not see a quarterback who could handle the ups, the downs, the pressure of being No. 1.
I ask this NFL boss what specifically struck him as strange, and he says it wasn’t anything specific Williams said. Rather, how he acted. The way he walked in, slumped, didn’t make eye contact and rambled without any direction. The GM’s been around hyper-intelligent people who jam a ton of words together in a short amount of time, but usually they arrive a point or ask if they answered your question. “Caleb starts talking,” the GM says, “and you don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Like a misunderstood artist.” Even then, once Williams left the room, this GM looked inward and wondered if he was the grumpy old asshole, if he was the one at fault for failing to connect with a modern-day athlete. “Is this the new normal?” he questioned.
The more he was around those other quarterbacks, the more the GM realized Williams was an anomaly.
Yes, Williams is a scintillating talent. He even declares Williams the single-most talented quarterback in the ’23 and ’24 classes combined.
Yes, it’s incumbent upon the team to pull the talent out of player.
“But the most important part of that position is not the physical talent,” he says. “Is everybody going to believe in you and play their ass off for you? Can you do that? Can you get everybody to buy in? There’s a reason there’s such a high failure rate. There’s a reason we’ve got 32 teams and we don’t have 32 real dudes at that position. There’s a reason! It is unique. That’s the most important thing with that position: the intangible qualities. And that’s a real question with Caleb.”
Several teams sought answers to that question.
Up to draft day, Williams stiff-armed everyone that didn’t own the top pick.
The New England Patriots, sitting at No. 3, actually had a pleasant Combine experience. After hearing rumors that Williams was going to blow them off, the QB strolled in at 8:58 for a 9 p.m. meeting, and was fine. Next, the Patriots brass flew west to USC’s pro day and hoped to get exclusive time with Williams to learn more. Arranging a simple meet-up quickly became something like getting transferred repeatedly on a call to an internet provider because Williams didn’t have an agent. Through the QB’s entourage of handlers, they tried to set up a time. The Patriots said they could carve out an hour or two wherever Williams had a gap in his schedule. The plan was to chat, get the quarterback on the board to break down plays, nothing extravagant.
“We were spinning over backwards for this guy,” one Patriots source says.
One handler finally called to say that, while Williams appreciates the interest, he doesn’t think New England had the ammo to trade up to No. 1. Huh? One Patriots exec stressed that even if everyone on earth thinks the quarterback is Bears-bound, anything can happen. What if he slipped? Of course the Patriots needed time with someone on their radar. It fell on deaf ears. There was no meeting in Southern California. With time to kill, the Patriots contingent drank a few cold ones, flew home and Williams refused their Top 30 invite.
The New York Giants, at No. 4, couldn’t get near Williams after the Combine. No visits. No dinners. No meetings. Daniels visited New Jersey, but not Williams. “We tried multiple times,” one Giants source says, “and kept getting shut down.” The Giants were also pinballed handler to handler and couldn’t figure out who was in charge of what when it came to Caleb, Inc.
Williams was the most incubated prospect several NFL execs have ever encountered. GMs insist he would’ve benefited by hiring an agent because it pays to build real relationships with teams for potential unions down the road. Odds are, you won’t play in one city your entire career. That’s why so many NFL execs and scouts were surprised Williams did zero medical testing at the Combine.
“You may get traded one day or it may not work out in Chicago,” says one NFL GM, “and a team may be hesitant to pay you because they don’t know you. “Everybody's looking in the now and not thinking big picture. That’s usually where agents can help you.”
Mostly, teams were forced to rely on the work of their area scouts. One NFC team that wasn’t in the running for a QB that spring shared their scouting report on Williams with Go Long. It’s a healthy mixed bag. This team’s scout described Williams as a lead-by-example QB, but wasn’t sure he had the “it” factor. He thought it was admirable that Williams would take teammates out to do yoga and shop at designer stores on Rodeo Drive with his NIL money, but found it strange that Williams was off to himself a lot during games. He didn’t interact much with teammates on the sideline. The scout viewed Williams as highly competitive, but believed he’d need a strong veteran presence in the QB room.
Twenty years had passed since Manning held a San Diego Chargers jersey like it was covered in maggots.
As they got boxed out themselves, other teams started to believe that Williams was wielding similar leverage over the Bears.
“He can be a John Elway or he can be an Eli Manning,” says the GM, who had the awful Combine interview with Williams. “He doesn’t want to go to the place where quarterbacks die. I’m assuming what happened is the Bears flipped it — into recruit mode. Obviously, it’d be pretty damn embarrassing if a quarterback refuses to go to your organization. They were looking at it from a different lens then a lot of other people. That’s their guy, that’s their quarterback. They’re recruiting him.”
Other QB-needy teams stopped wasting their time, accepted he was a “different cat” and moved on.
“But Chicago,” this GM says, “obviously had to go through the depths of everything.”
About that.
When I share what Bears sources told Go Long — that Williams has dyslexia and offensive coaches were left in the dark — this GM is stunned.
After repeating “wow” three times, he plainly explains how they handle such matters. No. 1, he tells his area scouts that it’s not their job to merely gather information — they’ve got to investigate. If a coach claims his player has a photographic memory, don’t just write it down and take the intel as fact. Figure it out. Connect it to the field. What do you see? Is that same player lining up on his team’s side of the field every play so a coach can tell him what to do? Is he refusing all cognitive tests? NFL teams must thoroughly pick apart the mental side of the sport — all livelihoods inside your building depend on it.
He has his scouts grade a prospect’s mental acuity.
He has coaches grade a prospect’s mental acuity.
Then? Draft meetings are an open forum. Everyone weighs in. This GM — unlike Poles — has created a culture of open dialogue and debate. Nobody feels irrelevant. And if the team agrees that a prospect with red flags is still worth drafting, a detailed plan is implemented with the coaching staff.
“What you can’t have,” the GM says “is it’s Week 2 of OTAs and a coach says that, ‘this guy can’t learn.’ It’s different if it’s an undrafted free agent that you just had the scouts’ information on and you didn’t meet with. I get it. But when you’re talking about a player that you actually drafted at any point, you’ve got to have a good feel. That coach was a part of that whole process.”
Eight GMs, execs and scouts for other teams we spoke to for this series say they did not know Williams had a condition.
The first thing one AFC GM would’ve done is relay this intel to the coaches to get their approval — is this workable? If so, he would’ve hired the best person he could who specializes in dyslexia and stressed for the coaches to present their playbook and play calls in a digestible format. Map this all out from April to September. “Have a plan,” he says. “Especially when you’re picking first.” One NFC GM viewed Williams as an introvert and non-leader. He thought it was odd that the quarterback didn’t play any other team sports growing up — he only swam.
But this? And Bears coaches had zero clue? “Oh shit,” he says. “That’s insane.”
One assistant GM in the AFC is surprised by the news, but points out that collegiate quarterbacks aren’t required to treat a playbook as a daily bible and study “X” hours of film. Talent alone overwhelms. Fact is, Williams still threw for 8,170 yards with 72 touchdowns in two seasons at USC. He cannot believe coaches were kept in the dark. (“As an organization, that’s bad.”) One assistant GM in the NFC says his team would’ve hired a learning specialist, a psychologist, a whole posse of experts to do everything in their power to make sure that 72-touchdown weapon in college flourished in the pros.
The offensive coaches are absolutely part of that equation, too.
“That is why the job is so much more than just drafting,” he says. “You have to have great communication skills.”
What smart people around the NFL do not understand is why the Bears didn’t open their eyes to one specific alternative. The prize was right there. There were teams willing to part with two or three first-round picks for Jayden Daniels. His intelligence. His work ethic. His athleticism. All of it was on par with some of the best quarterbacks who’ve gone No. 1 overall this century. And unlike Williams, he tore through SEC defenses. To one GM picking in the Top 10, Williams was shorter and less athletic. He doesn’t understand why Chicago saw such a canyon-sized gap between the two.
For years to come, legions of Bears fans may be asking themselves the same thing.
The Jayden Whiff
Within a week of going No. 2 overall, Jayden Daniels was at the Washington Commanders’ facility at 5:30 a.m. The habit stuck. Daniels made a point to walk through the front doors before the sun rose all season. His very first order of business — always — is to review that day’s call sheet with OC Kliff Kingsbury and QBs coach Tavita Pritchard. They discuss, debate and then take the script to the field to rehearse all of those plays vs. air by 6:30 a.m.
“Every single day,” says one Commanders assistant coach, witnessing this all. “Every single day.”
That chasm between Talent and Drive those 2024 Bears coaches lived becomes painfully obvious upon shifting your attention to the rookie quarterback 700 miles east. Right there in Williams’ hometown is everything the Bears could’ve had. Whereas one QB was nearly benched, Daniels’ discipline fueled Washington’s best season since 1991. Whereas one QB’s leadership style turned off many teammates, Daniels struck an instant kinship with the oldest player on the team.
When the Commanders completely remade their roster last offseason, they made a point to sign Bobby Wagner, a future gold-jacket linebacker who’s only the second player this century to string together 13 straight 100-tackle seasons. And he’s done it by lifting weights when most of his peers are still sleeping, by watching hours of film on his off days and approaching practice unlike most 34- and 35-year-old Super Bowl champs with his battle scars. When DC Joe Whitt told him to take a drill off, Wagner looked at him like he was nuts.
Very early, Wagner realized Daniels was hardwired exactly like him and viewed the kid as a long-lost brother.
They bust each other’s balls in the locker room. They talk trash on the practice field. When Daniels audibles to a different play, Wagner yells, “I know what that is!” Daniels barks back, “Oh yeah? Check this out!” From morning to dusk, these two instantly set a tone. For everyone. Because if the most decorated vet on the roster and the rookie were this dedicated, this competitive, this engaged, what was their excuse? From scratch, the Commanders built a special culture.
Once Wagner said out loud that Washington had a chance to win because of No. 5, this coach says the entire team’s belief reached a new level.
“Very, very similar personality-wise,” this coach says. “They’re not introverted. They’re quiet guys, but it’s not like a meekness. It’s quiet confidence. Because they prepare their asses off. It was very much a case of Bobby seeing something special in this kid and trying to accelerate his development and bestow wisdom on him, but it was also a young guy interjecting some youthful energy into a guy who’s been doing it for a long time.”
If you don’t have a quarterback, you have no chance. The Bears have cycled through their share of disasters. For decades. Score a talent like Williams and, abracadabra, your odds increase exponentially. But ultimately, you need something more. You need what’s inside Daniels. One source close to Daniels insists the quarterback’s sole focus is to win the Super Bowl, build a legacy and go down as one of the greatest players in NFL history. But he doesn’t merely say these things in a press conference. He lives it. He trained six or seven times per week all offseason. He’s the first player in the building. After rotating captains week to week through the season, Daniels was named a permanent captain into the playoffs. This vote — unlike the one in Chicago — wasn’t fixed.
Suddenly, players around the NFL want to play for the Commanders because of how this quarterback works.
“You can have a super talented guy and you got a really good chance to win,” says this Commanders coach, “but if you’ve got the right one, you go into it feeling super confident.”
When Daniels goes home, Washington knows he’s working.
The game appears to slow down for the 6-foot-4, 210-pound quarterback because it quite literally is slowing down. Since his final college season at LSU, Daniels has trained with virtual reality simulation at 1.75 times the normal game speed. This technology — from the German company Cognilize — was first designed for elite soccer players and forces Daniels to 1-2-3-4 his way through progressions at warp speed, so when it’s time for the real thing? He completed 69 percent of his passes for 3,568 yards with 25 touchdowns, nine picks, while rushing for another 891 yards and six scores.
When Poles heard Daniels was using this VR system, one source tells us, he said the Bears should get one for Williams. In the end, it didn’t happen. The Bears could not justify the cost because they figured the quarterback wouldn’t use it.
“Tell me what the fuck is wrong with that,” this source says. “How about you make him use it? How about you sit down and tell him, ‘Here’s what you’ve got to do. We are getting this for you. We expect you to use it X amount of times a week. We want you to watch one hour a day or five times a week.’ Whatever it is.”
Daniels doesn’t blow off his pass-protection meetings. He’s engaged. By the third session his rookie year, the Commanders were convinced he had complete control of all checks, all nuance. Daniels could explain to the O-Line coach that he was moving his running back toward a specific 1-on-1 matchup on a specific play because that particular pass rusher wasn’t very good. By sessions four and five, the Commanders started challenging him with unscouted bells and whistles.
He was not fazed. He knew who should block who. Daniels grasped the Why behind everything.
A photographic memory may be the reason. This summer, Kingsbury insinuated as much. There’s been times the OC will botch a play call in walkthroughs and the QB still nails it. The first time Washington installs a play, he’s got it down for life.
All the above are details gleaned when a team genuinely gets to know a quarterback before the draft. Other teams spent hours and hours around Daniels and grew to realize that he was the prospect in this draft with the best chance to go down as an all-timer. Truth be told, Daniels’ camp was also squeamish when it came to the woebegone Bears. They weren’t crying the blues that Poles had those Caleb blinders up. To one member of Daniels’ camp, “it was already written where both were supposed to go.”
Chicago also passed on Maye. His Year 1 in New England was full of L’s and distress. But one of Maye’s three wins did come against those Bears who dissed him.
He’s got his share of believers around the league.
“Drake Maye is exactly what you look for,” says one NFC scout. “Drake Maye is the prototype. Great kid. People want to be around him. You gravitate towards him. Then, you get to the talent. Then, you get to the physical tools and the athletic ability. He can run. The size. Everything is there.”
This NFC scout doesn’t hesitate. Right now, he believes Chicago selected the worst of all six quarterbacks.
Those other three all have realistic opportunities to ascend. There’s Nix, who threw for 29 touchdowns and led Denver to the playoffs for the first time in nine years. Sean Payton’s team is realistically aiming to dethrone the Chiefs in the AFC West. There’s Penix Jr., who supplied an appetizing three-game cameo. He believes the Falcons can boast the No. 1 offense in the entire league. And there’s McCarthy, the national champion who now slides into the driver’s seat of a Lamborghini with Kevin O’Connell and Justin Jefferson on a loaded Minnesota roster.
In Chicago, Williams is now working with one of the most brilliant offensive minds of this era.
He’ll have every opportunity to excel.
Ben Johnson won’t mince words, either.
Pressure’s on
Two Calebs are forever seared in the mind of this general manager.
This was one of the most baffling sights he’s ever seen scouting quarterbacks.
It was the fall of 2023 and his rebuilding team was clearly in the running for the USC quarterback. Up close, he wanted to see how Williams prepared for a game. The GM arrived at the stadium very, very early to watch the quarterback’s pre-pregame routine from the sideline, and… lordy. It was a jaw-dropping spectacle. All 50 throws were deliberate — freakin’ missiles. “He threw the shit out of the ball,” the GM says. And when the entire USC team later came out for their official pregame, Williams resembled a quarterback who did not give a damn.
He attempted left-handed passes. Clowned around.
“If you hadn’t been there to see the first thing,” the GM says, “you’d have been like, ‘What the fuck?’ Because he was dicking around.”
Football itself, the GM realized, has always come easy to Williams. High school to college, Williams has been talented enough to toggle that competitive switch within on and off and still kill defenses. He stole the Oklahoma job from Spencer Rattler, transferred to USC with the same coach (Lincoln Riley), And One street-balled through defenses at will. Humiliating collegiate defenders was a breeze. And he did it, the GM adds, while everyone only tells him he’s great. Because he was great.
Now that Williams has been KO’d to the canvas — for the first time ever — nobody’s sure if he’ll genuinely reassess his professionalism or, well, continue to dick around.
Mash X’s and O’s together all you’d like. Nerd out over Ben Johnson, offensive wizard, joining forces with a sublime talent. Williams’ fate is no matter of X’s and O’s. Johnson could be Don Coryell, Bill Walsh and Andy Reid rolled up into football’s ultimate Mr. Miyagi. He has also constructed an outstanding staff full of Thomas Brown-like personalities who’ll push all 53 players. There are multiple quarterback whisperers here. And with his sawed-off jaw, dagger eyes and NSFW language, Johnson will not tolerate an inkling of insubordination.
All public statements from all parties indicate the 23-year-old quarterback is responding to coaching.
Only Caleb Williams knows the truth. For the first time in his football life, he is not a human cheat code. He’s got to accept the fact that talent alone is not enough. During training camp, as captured, Williams failed to thread four straight passes into a net target, yelped and stormed off. Scattered across the country, his old coaches experienced flashbacks to all the times the quarterback treated them like that net.
Forget the misses. Emotional outbursts are always worse because they hint at a deeper problem.
“He never faced any real adversity on the football field,” says one of the Bears scouts who studied Williams closely. “He’s never really had to deal with having to put in the kind of work, the preparation that you have to put in as an NFL quarterback because he’s been so much more talented and skilled than everybody else. Last year he got a chance to see, ‘Oh, this is different.’ He can be as good as he wants to be. But it’s going to be on him.”
One assistant GM compares Williams to Arizona’s Kyler Murray in that both are frontrunners. When the going’s good, he’s on. When adversity strikes? “It’s all downhill.”
Those Bears coaches who worked with the quarterback so many hours last season don’t think it’s complicated.
“It all depends on how receptive he is to being coached, to being challenged,” says one who knows him well, “and also how much accountability he takes to bring himself to be the great pro he claims he wants to be.”
On paper, this is paradise. The interior was fortified with Joe Thuney, Jonah Jackson and Drew Dalman. Tight end Colston Loveland could be Sam LaPorta 2.0. Out wide, the team has D.J. Moore and Rome Odunze. This offensive system helped morph one of the NFL’s most rancid franchises into Super Bowl contention. Johnson’s charge is to build a quarterback who can thrive down-to-down. He put as much as possible on Williams’ plate early. This scheme hums best when fueled by a dizzying array of motions, shifts, misdirection, general tomfoolery.
Or, in other words, everything Williams earned an “F” in as a rookie.
When mental processing is minimized and freelancing reigns, he can dazzle. The QB’s best success as a rookie came in the 2-minute drill. His arm is A+. At Johnson’s first presser, he said he’s never been around a quarterback who can improvise to this extreme. Yet, 2-minute mode is not sustainable all game, all season. In this offense, the quarterback must master the psychological warfare between the huddle and the snap. Johnson gives his quarterback multiple plays, and it’s on you to diagnose. That headset always goes radio silent with 15 seconds left on the play clock.
Jared Goff, a marble statue compared to Williams, was an MVP candidate last season because he could execute this offense to perfection. He could handle hard coaching.
Right now, the quarterback’s poll numbers are high in Chicago. Those left in the dust are skeptical.
“Maybe he is such a good coach that he can create some really dumbed down stuff for Caleb that’ll work to his strengths,” says one former member of the Bears front office. “Because, look, Caleb is very talented from some of those throws that he makes off platform. He’s very good in two-minute situations without structure. So that, he has going for him. But he just doesn’t have the work ethic of an NFL quarterback.”
Johnson has essentially had his pick of any job opening two straight coaching cycles.
Did Poles and co. share all top-, top-secret intel with Johnson before he took the job and pinned a Bears lapel to his suit? “If you knew the truth about this,” this source continues, “why would you want to risk your career?”
One current coach on Johnson’s staff told Go Long that he has enjoyed working with Williams so far and that it’s been fun to see how Williams responds to Johnson’s hard coaching the next day. He hadn’t heard anything about a learning disability but this coach said they’re asking Williams to play football in a different way than what he’s had in the past. Johnson made a point to add 37-year-old Case Keenum to the room, too.
This first-time head coach is described by one NFL GM as a man who loves working in a lab. He “entrenches” himself on the offense, by locking himself in his office and searching for all possible answers. Part of him worries he could burn out as a head coach. He won’t tolerate laziness.
“Knowing the head coach’s personality,” this GM says, “he won’t be afraid to confront him Caleb. We’ll know more when adversity hits.”
For now, there’s harmony. Chairman George McCaskey and president Kevin Warren rewarded Poles, 15-36 at the helm, with a contract extension to align the GM with Johnson. Too often, owners get impatient and fire their GM and/or head coach. Then, another. Then, another. There’s no rhyme, no reason and the entire football department drowns in the NFL’s sewer. GMs deserve the opportunity to draft their guy at quarterback and flesh out a roster around that cheap rookie contract. But it’s also difficult for any owner to tell his constituents that it’s 85 degrees and sunny amid a typhoon.
Losses demand accountability. Poles, drifting into Matt Millen territory, needs Williams to succeed.
The NFL community at large was surprised to see this extension.
“Back in the day, if you didn’t win, you got fired,” says one AFC assistant GM. “The assumption was you’re not good at your job.”
McCaskey and Warren may be hoping that Johnson waves his magic wand, fixes everything and makes everyone in the building correct. Sources inside the building believe Johnson is already pulling the personnel strings and are encouraged by King’s growing voice. Chicago drafted Loveland 10th overall despite Poles signing another tight end (Cole Kmet) a four-year, $50 million deal. Years past, scouts do not believe the Bears would’ve ever touched a prospect with such glaring character concerns as Luther Burden. Let alone 39th overall.
The surest sign of them all came across the transaction wire on Aug. 12: Waived, WR John Jackson.
Johnson didn’t draft Williams. There’s a good chance Poles will not have veto power if this season turns south because Johnson is the $13 Million Dollar Man. And as one NFC GM points out, new coaches fall out of love with someone else’s quarterback all the time. Mitchell Trubisky was Matt Nagy’s guy… until he wasn’t. Justin Fields was Matt Eberflus’ guy… until he wasn’t.
“Ben can say whatever he wants about the kid,” this GM says. “He didn’t draft Caleb. He’s not tied to him. If there are warts? There’s going to be some truth serum when they’re coaching him.”
No question, Johnson knows he’s walking into a building in dire need of fumigation. In Detroit, he saw Dan Campbell’s miracles firsthand. Creating new habits in all players, all coaches, all employees is more difficult than a quarterback reclamation project. “It’s not 90 percent of why you’re good,” says one AFC assistant GM, “but it’s not 10.” Nor is Johnson the first coach in Bears history to promise change. As those pages on the calendar turn — despite his greatest efforts — a stink in the air may linger.
Zoom out and it’s obvious the atmospheric pressure here is conducive to franchise-altering mistakes.
The first sign of a bad culture is if the team itself feels compelled to tell you how hunky-dory the culture is nonstop. One longtime staff member who’s lived the endless stream of general managers and head coaches remembers when names like Urlacher and Briggs and Hester graced the field.
“Back then,” he says, “there was never any talk about ‘culture’ or ‘family,’ all these fucking buzzwords that get thrown around. That shit creates itself by being good people and creating natural bonds and friendships and relationships. And then it obviously thrives when you start winning.”
His attention then shifts to this current regime — all the way to the top. He’s disgusted.
“They’re trying to drum up this facade of ‘culture’ and ‘good people.’”
He pauses.
“Are you listening to yourself?”
This is a well done and obviously well researched piece. Journalism at an elite level.
This is good old fashioned investigative journalism here. I feel like I can smell cigarettes and burnt coffee…I’m waiting for Woodward and Bernstein to walk by. My guess is that you are going to get some hate from this piece, Tyler. But you did the damn thing anyway. I’m proud of you. I’d bet a lot of money that Bob McGinn is beaming with pride when he reads this series. Thank you for this work!