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Caleb Williams is saying all the right things ahead of the NFL Draft.
There’s been a pervasive narrative which has existed for months that Caleb Williams doesn’t want to play for the Chicago Bears if they draft him, following in the footsteps of John Elway and Eli Manning, who said no to the Colts and Chargers respectively. It’s helped label Williams as a “prima donna,” a “diva,” prompting some fans to take this idea and run with it to the point where it’s a character concern that should pull him off the board.
However, the rumors never actually cited anything from Williams himself, and in a ranging interview with ESPN the quarterback clarified his excitement about playing in the NFL no matter where he goes, specifically highlighting the Bears and Commanders — presumably the two teams who will actually land him in April’s draft.
“If I get drafted by the Bears, I’ll be excited,” he said. “If they trade the pick, and I get drafted by someone else, I’m just as excited. Speaking about Chicago, they have a talented team, a talented offense and defense. For anyone to be in that situation, I think they’d be excited.”
Williams isn’t wrong. There’s a lot of work to do in Chicago, but the team is in a great position to take major strides forward, assuming the front office makes the right decisions. The offensive line is still a work in progress, but the Bears do have two really solid weapons in D.J. Moore and Cole Kmet, as well as the No. 9 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft where they could find a difference maker.
The big question moving forward is the braintrust at the top. Chicago made the decision to keep head coach Matt Eberflus thanks to the defensive surge late in the season, but they made a brilliant move in landing Shane Waldron as their new offensive coordinator. Waldron appears to be in a position where he can revitalize the offense, while also being someone pegged as a future head coach in the NFL — which could foreshadow a change mid-season if needed.
Williams is aware that if he’s the No. 1 pick and lands in Chicago that he’ll be facing the legacy of some of the city’s sporting greats. You might way to scroll down a little if you’re feeling old, because it’s about to get worse.
Williams said he has been to Chicago once, has heard good things about the rowdiness of Bears fans, and has gone down video rabbit holes studying both Jordan and Payton, two of the city’s most iconic athletes.
“I’m 22. I didn’t really get to see those players,” Williams said.
The quarterback insists he really has no agenda when it comes to trying to call his own shot in the draft. That he’ll be excited wherever he goes, and made a point of accentuating that no matter where he ends up there won’t be an expectation on his part that he’ll run the show.
“Everyone thinks I’m a one-man team,” Williams said, referencing the symphony of work that makes an F1 team go. “That’s just not the case.”
Williams isn’t specifically looking for a team where he can win immediately, and let’s face it, that probably won’t happen in either Chicago or Washington. However, he does want to see fire inside whichever organization drafts him, and a desire to keep improving more than anything else. In this way it’s no dissimilar to the culture that has been bred in Detroit under Dan Campbell, which has taken the Lions from perennial cellar dwellers, now to a force in the NFC.
“Just the constant growth and change, that’s important whether you are a quarterback or wide receiver or a general manager or an owner or an organization,” Williams said of what he’s looking for. “Just a healthy situation — in the facility, with the players — and just a place that really wants to win.”
It’s still extremely murky what Chicago will do with the No. 1 pick. At times it’s felt like they will stay in the spot and draft a quarterback, while at others that they could stick with Justin Fields under center, build around him, and address other needs.
The elephant in the room when it comes to Caleb Williams and the draft is the Commanders. Williams is a native of Washington D.C.With their decision to hire Kliff Kingsbury as offensive coordinator they’re embracing a system which seems tailor made for Williams to succeed. The Kingsbury offense turned Kyler Murray into one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, and Williams’ creativity post-snap and ability to throw on the run is most often compared to the Cardinals quarterback.
Could that tip Washington’s hand at a desire to move up to No. 1 and take Williams? Perhaps. For now, the quarterback is just about allaying fears that he’s no a guy who will say “no” to a team just because the job is difficult, and that he’s willing to land anywhere in the NFL and build a winning culture there.
Now we wait for the Bears’ next move.
