You're up Caleb Williams, Part I: All falls apart
The Chicago Bears believe they've finally found their QB in Year 105. Drafting Caleb Williams, however, is only the beginning. Go Long sifts through the rubble in Part I of this series.
The most ballyhooed draft pick in the history of the Chicago Bears is wasting no time ushering in his own signature celebration.
Whenever cameras are near, Caleb Williams curls his five fingers inward for a “bear claw.”
Sometimes, he adds a scowling snarl for effect. Other times, his expression is emotionless. But he’s bringing the claw everywhere — the private jet with wide receiver Rome Odunze, a Chicago Cubs game, a Chicago Sky game, Halas Hall — and it’s either insane nobody in the Bears’ 105-year existence has made this a trend before or it’s Gen Z cringe fit for the 14-year-olds on TikTok. Either way, the claw is here to stay and everyone should get used to a quarterback who’s unlike any No. 1 pick before him.
The nail-painting. The fashion. The postgame puddle of tears. If scouts entered a football laboratory dead-set on creating a player who’s the diametric antithesis of everything Ditka and Butkus and Monsters of the Midway, it’d be USC’s flamboyant flamethrower. Surviving this market requires a rare layer of mental toughness. Expectations have butchered quarterbacks past. If Williams leaps into the stands to cry in his mother’s lap after a crushing late-season loss at Soldier Field, he’s got a better chance of being shoved by an eight-beers-deep diehard than gently consoled.
This could all combust in grisly fashion.
When it became clear the Chicago Bears and Williams were on a collision course at the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, those fans filling the stadium chanted “We Want Fields!” as if informing ownership that Justin Fields had officially passed their final hazing ritual for full initiation into some Delta Da Bears fraternity.
GM Ryan Poles could’ve pro’d and con’d his brain into knots and chosen more familiar quarterback terrain. But to escape a century-plus of quarterback purgatory, a Big Bang was always needed. A prospect unlike anything the franchise has experienced. A prospect who’ll make people uncomfortable. That’s most certainly the 6-foot-1, 217-pound kid from Washington D.C., who bears a striking resemblance to the GOAT-in-progress Chicago bypassed in 2017: Patrick Mahomes.
Hall of Famer Warren Moon leaps right into this comparison.
“Very creative, very talented,” Moon says. “He’s tough and he can throw it with all the arm angles. He doesn’t have to be set. He’s a miniature Pat Mahomes. He’s probably better than Pat Mahomes coming out of college.”
One scout who’s tracked Williams closely describes the quarterback as a supercharged Donovan McNabb. He believes. He sees Williams as the face of the Bears for years.
One coach who’s been with Williams the last three years — USC’s Dennis Simmons, the team’s assistant head coach and passing game coordinator — heard other players on the roster call the QB “generational.” At first, he was dubious. That’s a bold statement spewed far too liberally in today’s sports lexicon. The more he worked with Williams, the more he agreed.
“If there is someone that is transcendent or generational,” Simmons says, “he would fit in that category.”
Hit on this pick, and nothing’s the same in this city ever again.
Of course, this is how it begins in the Windy City. Draft-day hugs with Roger Goodell and the spike in both jersey sales and season tickets always darken into more of a tragic drama. Brighter days may finally be on the horizon for the Chicago Bears. The roster around Williams is ready to win — now. He’s throwing to arguably the best trio of receivers in the NFL: D.J. Moore, Keenan Allen and Odunze.
To deliver on the hype, these Bears must learn from those Bears.
Drafting the “transcendent” talent, the Mini Mahomes, is only the beginning because so much more goes into the ascent of a superstar quarterback.
Especially in Chicago.
Missing on Mahomes was an egregious error for all 10 teams atop that fateful draft. But it’s also true that the issues always run deeper than who a team drafts or does not. To figure out how this can finally go right, we’ll look back at how everything has managed to go so very, very wrong in Part I then look ahead to how everything can go right in Part II. This series is the culmination of several conversations with people from all sides of the Bears organizational apparatus — front office, the coaching staff, players, experts.
The best way one longtime Bears exec can explain the team’s issues? Think of it in thirds.
All 33.3-percent factors prove equally deadly.
Bad personnel evaluation.
Organizational dysfunction.
Pressure of the market.
“It is f--king hard to play in this city at that position because as soon as you play two or three bad games, you’re the worst mother--ker on the planet and it comes down heavy,” this former Bears exec says. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the New York Jets and the Chicago Bears are the two teams that have a hardest time finding quarterbacks because you better have the guy who’s wired right. And talented.”
Ineptitude has driven this city to desperation mode. On Draft Eve, the unveiling of plans for a new $4.6 billion stadium were kicked off with prayer. Rev. Charlie Dates of Salem Baptist Church straight-up asked God to get the Bears back to a Super Bowl.
Twenty-four hours later, Williams was the pick.
Williams is the man carrying the franchise on his shoulders now.
“I’m not Jesus,” Simmons says, “but I could say this for sure: I wouldn’t bet against him.”
One thing’s for certain: This is dangerous terrain.