NEWSLETTER
Look how far we’ve come on our obsessive Caleb Williams watch.
Because of unsubstantiated rumors, innuendo, and scuttlebutt, there were murmurs about Caleb Williams not wanting to play for the Chicago Bears. Those conversations seemed to hit a fever pitch in February when FOX Sports commentator Colin Cowherd shared his opinion that he thought Williams didn’t want to play in Chicago. The most annoying narrative of the football season should’ve died a day later when Cowherd set the record straight while doing a media tour of the Chicago sports landscape.
It didn’t. But we can start putting it to bed now after this NFL Network segment featuring respected league insider Ian Rapoport:
Rap Sheet has two banger quotes I want to share for those of you who can’t (or are unable to) listen to the video:
The dumbest Caleb Williams narrative can be put to rest
Put it down in your calendars, folks. At 5:24 p.m. CT on April 4, 2024, the “Caleb Williams doesn’t want to play in Chicago and will force his way out” narrative died. It’s over. Done. Ballgame. Se acabó. É finita. My ability to put it into any other foreign language ends here. As does the narrative that Caleb Williams isn’t willing to play for the Chicago Bears.
And now, we can have peace.
The first three months of the NFL offseason have been treacherous for so many reasons. But I don’t want to spend too much time hashing out the silliness. Instead, I’d like to serve up a reminder that the most-tiring storyline of the pre-draft process has been trending toward this exact finish for months now. Caleb Williams, himself, told reporters he was excited to play for whichever team drafted him. And the Bears have long been the team connected to Williams in the pre-draft process.
Caleb Williams to the Bears has been one of the worst-kept secrets in sports. I can’t help it if people didn’t want to see the writing on the wall. After all, you can lead a pup to the dinner bowl but you can’t make it eat.
The good news is that the Bears have done well in lining things up to give Caleb Williams a happy landing. We’ve been discussing how the Bears’ actions appeared geared toward making Chicago a quarterback-friendly environment for Williams to grow. Since the start of the new league year in March, the Bears have brought in a Pro Bowl wide receiver (Keenan Allen), a functional second tight end (Gerald Everett), a running back who can do damage as a pass-catcher out of the backfield (D’Andre Swift), a new starting center (Coleman Shelton), and useful offensive line depth (Ryan Bates, Matt Pryor).
Oh, and they also hired a new offensive coordinator (Shane Waldron), quarterbacks coach (Kerry Joesph), and passing game coordinator (Thomas Brown) to help usher Williams into the NFL. All of those coaches are branches from the Sean McVay coaching tree. In other words, all of these new Bears assistants are going to be speaking the same language when bringing Williams up to NFL speed.
In the end, I’m so happy we’ve reached this point of the offseason. There were moments I wasn’t sure we’d make it. The Bears Twitter Civil War is something I’ll never forget (even though I’d love to do so) for as long as I write about this team. But it is over now. Time to put down the pitchforks and exchange them for a welcome mat. A new quarterback is coming to town.
I guess this means it really is a good time to buy stock in the Bears.
