Among the NFL’s heirloom franchises, the Chicago Bears are the one nonetheless residing within the final century – the satisfaction of George “Papa Bear” Halas, a league founding father. From their neoclassical stadium to their 101-year-old owner-matriarch to their cussed reverence for “Bear Climate” (ie: lake-effect winter situations that solely have an effect on the opposite workforce), all the pieces concerning the franchise is old school. Even the Bears being in place to pick out a quarterback with the primary choose on this month’s draft has arrived about 30 years too late in a league the place the passing recreation dominates. What’s notable is that the passer of their sights isn’t the second-coming of Forties hero Sid Luckman or a Harvard man or another statuesque golden boy. It’s Caleb Williams, Gen Z’s poster boy quarterback.
On paper, Williams would seem to own exactly the resume that Virginia McCaskey, the owner-matriarch in query, would possibly describe as “the cat’s pajamas.” He went to USC – a university soccer program that Chicagoland’s many Notre Dame followers no less than respect. He received the Heisman trophy, placing him in a league with early Bears two-way star Johnny Lujack. And Williams performed most of his school video games within the LA Memorial Coliseum, one of many few stadiums left that may rival Soldier Subject’s antiquity – so he shouldn’t be a snob concerning the patchy high quality of the Bears pure residence turf.
Factor is, paper is a relic of the analog world, the world the Bears lorded over as soon as, once they received eight championships earlier than the Tremendous Bowl period. Williams, however, is a product of our perpetually on-line age. He wasn’t even born when Tom Brady was drafted, and he marches to the beat of his personal drum. The 22-year-old psyches himself up for video games by listening to the very un-Zoomer John Legend’s Atypical Folks, which is … a selection. He pushes the style envelope, infamously posing for GQ in a crimson gown with white gymnasium socks and sneakers. That didn’t sit properly with old-school soccer followers. “I’m not taking him with my no1 choose,” one Barstool sports activities commentator posted on TikTok. “I’m not even gonna clarify it. I’m buying and selling the choose.”
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And keyboard crusaders misplaced their minds once more when Williams turned as much as a USC ladies’s basketball recreation this month with fingernails painted to match his pink iPhone and pockets – which some predictably took as an indication that Williams may be homosexual and, thus, unfit to be the face of an NFL franchise. (By no means thoughts that Williams has a girlfriend and that, apart from, Carl Nassib proved how few folks really care about professional footballers’ sexuality.) “A very powerful qualities in a frontrunner are being assured, being safe with your self, being daring and having everybody you’re main need to observe you,” the NFL Community’s Kyle Brandt stated in Williams’s protection.
Like many trendy paragons of manhood, Williams typically paints his fingernails for a bit of additional aptitude, generally with delicate messages meant for his opponents. FUCK UTAH, which he wrote for a 2022 recreation towards the Utes, was much less delicate, nonetheless, and was doomed to reside in infamy after Williams left USC with out even as soon as beating the Utes. It makes Bears legend Jim McMahon’s commissioner-taunting headbands look quaint by comparability.
Williams isn’t simply irreverent. He’s irrepressible, taking to social media to dunk on writers who’ve the temerity to counsel he “has by no means skilled adversity” – which is their means of suggesting he performs towards the Black athlete stereotype. Williams was additionally among the many first school soccer stars to reap the benefits of the switch portal, transferring to USC from Oklahoma expressly to proceed growing underneath coach Lincoln Riley and likewise prime himself for the professional recreation underneath QB whisperer Kliff Kingsbury, the previous Arizona Cardinals head man now working the Washington Commanders offense. Till a couple of months in the past, the hypothesis was that Williams was tying his destiny to Kingsbury and DC – his hometown franchise who will choose second on this 12 months’s draft – was a extra doubtless touchdown spot than Chicago, the place he allegedly had little interest in enjoying.
All of this deepened the loyalty Bears followers had for Justin Fields, the quarterback the workforce drafted with the eleventh choose simply three years in the past. When Chicago performed host to Atlanta on New Yr’s Eve, 62,000 followers at Chicago’s Soldier Subject chanted: “We would like Fields” as he led the Bears to a 37-17 victory. The path to the Bears’ suburban observe facility was lined with marketing campaign indicators that learn “In Justin We Trustin’”. However in March, Chicago shipped Fields to Pittsburgh, basically clearing house to usher in Williams – who even makes Fields, your typical younger footballer with a degree to show, seem like an outdated curmudgeon.
Earlier than final 12 months’s school soccer season Williams had dropped hints about staying at school this 12 months, ostensibly to keep away from being picked first by Chicago. On the time he was panned for suggesting as a lot and so was his father, Carl – who, amongst different issues, has been fast to level out that his son, already school sports activities’ high NIL earner, will likely be motivated by extra than simply cash. In actual fact, rumors final July that Carl had requested potential brokers in the event that they’d really feel comfy negotiating with NFL groups for possession stakes have been all however confirmed when league house owners voted to ban “non-family staff” from taking fairness in groups. “He’d virtually be higher off not being drafted than being drafted first,” Carl instructed GQ in February. “The system is totally backwards.”
Ever since, league insiders have dismissed Carl as a foul affect – no shock provided that the NFL draft is, basically, a lurid TV present about Black fatherlessness. And for too many armchair pundits, his Zoomer son appears certain to be as misplaced on the Bears as a 90in plasma display inside a Victorian drawing room (over the hearth, the place the Rembrandt as soon as had satisfaction of place), with some fearing Williams may very well develop into as huge a bust as USC lab mission Todd Marinovich.
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If Williams is being overly nitpicked, it’s as a result of there isn’t a lot to criticize with regards to his precise expertise. Again and again throughout his school profession, he was touted because the second coming of Patrick Mahomes, adept at executing performs as they have been drawn up, and improvising when issues broke down. Like Mahomes, Williams could make each throw you may consider and a good few you may’t – or, as one scout calls them, the “holy shit” throws. Because the draft attracts close to, professional expertise evaluators have taken to evaluating him to Aaron Rodgers – one other QB recognized for, ahem, doing issues in a different way, and a person with whom the Bears are hauntingly acquainted.
Possibly a decade in the past, when Bears soccer was nonetheless constructed round bellcow runners, hero linebackers and different Monsters of the Halfway, they’d have been the final workforce to make use of a high choose on a generational passer – not to mention one with Black and Native American ancestry. (A few of us Bears followers are sufficiently old to recollect the slim margins Black stars like Vince Evans and Kordell Stewart got among the many workforce’s wider assist.)
However whereas soccer followers exterior Chicago weren’t wanting, the Bears did one thing many by no means thought doable: they advanced. They stopped letting relations run the franchise or get taken in by the new younger GM prospect and turned the reins over to Chiefs front-office grinder Ryan Poles – who, by the way, can be Black. (Egads, what would Papa Bear suppose!) Poles has been given unprecedented authority to maneuver the workforce on from Fields and different widespread gamers and rebuild round new faces like Williams and Keenan Allen, a sure-handed receiver who arrived through a commerce with the Los Angeles Chargers final month. It’s virtually as if Poles is aware of what he’s searching for in a championship workforce, one thing Bears followers haven’t skilled since Mike Ditka and Buddy Ryan have been each carried off the sector after a close to flawless 1985 season.
What’s most encouraging: Williams, regardless of experiences on the contrary, doesn’t simply need to be in Chicago; he hasn’t hesitated to snort on the outlandish outfits followers speculate he would possibly put on on draft day. “Wait til; yall see draft day swimsuit and my women gown,” he wrote in response to 1 outfit guess, the geisha-evoking cowl picture from Younger Thug’s 2016 mixtape.
The world might not be prepared for a perception-bending star QB who’s so supremely self possessed. However the league’s most hidebound franchise has solely gotten to this point hewing to custom. Williams, no less than, factors them in a route that’s the closest they’ve come to the longer term.
