NEWSLETTER
Caleb Williams met with the media on Friday morning in Indianapolis at the NFL Scouting Combine. The consensus top prospect in the 2024 NFL Draft walked to the podium with a big smile as he greeted a large segment of media members with a cheery “Good morning, everybody!”
Before Williams could even get through his greeting, he was being aggressively lobbed a question about whether or not he decided not to test in Indianapolis this weekend because he was “afraid” to be compared side by side against the other top quarterbacks in the draft class.
As a sidebar, that question and how it was delivered were frustrating. I know there were a lot of people at that podium. Many people were also at podiums last month when I covered the Super Bowl. These are humans; we should treat them as such. The kid hadn’t even gotten to the podium and finished his greeting before he was pelted with an aggressively-worded question that almost sounded more like an accusation than a question.
I say that to compliment Williams because he didn’t let it bother him at all, and he was firm in his answer, which was simply, “No. Not doing things [at the combine] was a decision by me and my team and my family and it comes down to that.”
If things play out how most believe they will, Caleb Williams will be playing in a tough market with decades upon decades of failures under center. Composure will be a trait that will serve him well when the water gets rough in Chicago.
In the grand scheme of quarterback evaluations, this trait isn’t super high on the boxes that must be checked. Still, in the vacuum of providing context and commentary to a press conference, it was a plus for Williams.
Williams spent 13 minutes on Friday answering questions in a press conference style format and the better part of the morning making appearances on various shows. Here are some notable things the top quarterback said in the draft.
Caleb Williams shares his feelings about potentially being drafted by the Chicago Bears
“That’s pretty good for a team that has the first pick,” he said about the Bears’ seven wins last season. “And they’ve got a good defense. They’ve got good players on offense, and it’s pretty exciting if you can go into a situation like that.”
Williams was complimentary of the Bears and what they’ve been building in Chicago. He also said he doesn’t have a preference for which team he goes to, just that he wants to be the number one pick in the draft next month.
“Whoever has the No. 1 pick,” Williams said to NFL Media’s Tom Pelissero when asked what team he preferred to be drafted by.
Right now, that’s the Bears, and it seems like all of the commotion regarding his lack of desire to play in Chicago was your typical pre-draft process propaganda.
Why didn’t Caleb Williams want to participate in the medical testing at the NFL Scouting Combine?
“I’ll be doing the medical stuff, just not here in Indy,” Williams said. “I’ll be doing it at the team interviews. Not 32 teams can draft me. There’s only one of me. So the teams that I go to for my visit, those teams will have the medical, and that will be it.”
It’s different. I get it.
But I also understand why Williams doesn’t feel the need to go through an ultra-invasive three-hour medical screening with teams that have no shot at drafting him.
He’s going to go through all of the testing with the teams that do when they meet over the next six weeks. It’s really not a concern, other than the fact that he (and others) are bucking the trend this year and choosing to have more control over their process.
Caleb Williams talked about the ups and downs of his 2023 season at USC and his much-talked-about post-loss emotions
“Lincoln [Riley] sat me down after our loss to Utah, I believe, and he sat me down, and he said either you grow from something like this or you keep feeling this feeling, and you’ll stay where you are.”
Williams and the Trojans lost five of their final six games this season after starting 6-0. Williams was criticized for his post-loss emotions in some of those losses down the stretch, which Williams took ownership of, and he said that he felt like he let his teammates down in those moments.
“It’s something that I only get to experience. It’s something that I really care about, which isn’t only winning the game but doing it with my teammates. Every time we lose, I feel like I let my teammates down.”
Good for Williams wearing those losses here publicly, but those were not his fault. He was carrying a flawed Trojans team on his back through a gauntlet of serious opponents down the stretch. The only reason they even looked competitive was because of his play.
Is Caleb Williams an “Artist” or a “Surgeon?”
Earlier this week, Ryan Poles told the media at the Scouting Combine that he and personnel director Jeff King view quarterbacks as either “artists or surgeons.” Williams was asked which he was on Friday.
“I like to think when it’s time to be surgical, it’s time to be surgical,” Williams said. “There have been many games where it gets late in the game and I’ve ran or scrambled or threw a crazy pass that’s been the artist, the magician. And there’s been times, even when I hurt my hamstring, and I couldn’t run, I sat in the pocket the whole time the rest of the game and delivered the ball.”
Caleb Williams shared why he chose to sit down with ESPN’s Pete Thamel for a feature that ran earlier this week
“You rarely see me speak, ever,” he said. “As you all know, I don’t really go out and speak much, but this was important to me that I wanted to put something out before I came here, especially with all the noise and things like that that’s been brewing before I came here. Now since I’ve been here, a bunch of stuff comes out. But just wanted to put something out so everyone knew exactly where it was coming from.”
Caleb Williams’ media availability on Friday is just a tiny piece of the puzzle for the Chicago Bears
Williams’ media day in Indianapolis isn’t going to make or break the Bears’ view of him. Still, as I mentioned above, how he handled the media is a small piece of the puzzle in ultimately deciding whether or not he’s the right man for the next month.
In my opinion, Williams did very well on Friday. He came off as calm, confident, and likable—all things he’s been accused of not being over the past few months.
When the Bears met with Williams this week, they didn’t have him participate in the putt-putt or darts they had other prospects do last year. Instead, they had him on the whiteboard, breaking down plays and then challenging him to recall them later. They also allowed him to ask them what he wanted to know about them.
“Just, do you want to win?” he said. “That’s it.”
