After a disappointing 5-12 season, the Chicago Bears feel like they’ve been born again during OTAs. Ben Johnson has already done his best to instill a new attitude after the failed tenure of Matt Eberflus. The Bears have added established veterans such as Grady Jarrett, Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson to accelerate the team’s rebuild and a pair of intriguing playmakers were added in April’s draft in tight end Colston Loveland and wide receiver Luther Burden III.
It’s the usual victory lap the Bears have produced over the offseason. But the one thing that will tie it together is Caleb Williams.
Williams is the key to the Bears fulfilling their potential. A former No. 1 overall pick, Williams will look to build on a promising rookie season and look to become their first franchise quarterback since Sid Luckman was slinging passes in the 1940s or Jay Cutler in the 2010s. But his OTAs have gotten that campaign off to a rocky start and fired up a negative spotlight before the season even begins.
Caleb Williams’s Sophomore Season Has Gotten Off to a Tough Start in Bears OTAs
From a statistical standpoint, Williams had a solid first season in the NFL. He completed 62.5% of his passes for 3,541 yards, 20 touchdowns, and six interceptions and led Chicago to win four of its first six games. If you looked at his Pro Football Reference page alone, you should be excited about what he could become. But you also have to wonder about some of the things that happened off the field.
There were times last year, including a Week 15 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, where Williams’s frustration was visible. There were also times where Williams’s leadership appeared to be lacking, including a Thanksgiving loss to the Detroit Lions that could have been saved if Williams had called a timeout. The blame for those moments has been pinned on a leaky offensive line and Eberflus’s ineptitude. But the great quarterbacks step up in those times, and Williams failed to do so as Chicago endured a 10-game losing streak.
While Johnson is tasked with helping Williams thrive as a quarterback, his secondary objective is to help him mature as a leader. Johnson mentioned that the team’s body language was one thing he wanted to improve during OTAs and that falls directly on the quarterback.
“We don’t want to be a ‘palms-up team’ where we’re questioning everything,” Johnson said last month. “No, no, no; to me that’s a little bit of a sign of weakness.”
Williams also created a firestorm before the Bears converged for OTAs with his comments in Seth Wickersham’s upcoming book “American Kings: A Biography Of The Quarterback.” In the book, Williams and his father called Chicago “the place quarterbacks go to die” and pondered circumventing the draft or forcing a trade to play for Kevin O’Connell and the Minnesota Vikings.
While he tried to downplay the comments, his thoughts never needed to be public. Instead, Williams walks into a Week 1 matchup with the Vikings and a potential pressure cooker if he or the Bears struggle to open the season.
Of course, Williams can silence those concerns by winning games and stepping up in the locker room. But it carries a sense of deja vu for a franchise that has killed the careers of promising signal callers in the past. Perhaps Johnson can be the difference, but OTAs are showing that it’s time for Williams to grow up.