Of the NFL’s heirloom franchises, the Chicago Bears are the ones that still lived in the last century: the pride of George “Papa Bear” Halas, one of the founding fathers of the League. From their neoclassical stadium to their 101-year-old owner matriarch to their stubborn reverence for “Bear Weather” (i.e., winter lake-effect conditions that only affect nature) other team), everything about the franchise is old-fashioned. Even the Bears being in a position to select a quarterback with the first pick in this month’s draft have arrived about 30 years too late in a league where the passing game dominates. What’s striking is that the passerby in their sights is not the second coming of 1940s hero Sid Luckman, or a Harvard man or some other stately golden boy. It’s Caleb Williams, the quarterback of Generation Z.
On paper, Williams appears to possess exactly the resume that Virginia McCaskey, the owner-matriarch in question, might describe as “the cat’s pajamas.” He went to USC – a college football program that is at least respected by Chicagoland’s many Notre Dame fans. He won the Heisman Trophy, putting him in the league with early Bears two-time star Johnny Lujack. And Williams played most of his college games at the LA Memorial Coliseum, one of the few remaining stadiums that rivals Soldier Field’s antiquity — so he shouldn’t be a snob about the patchy quality of the Bears’ natural home field.
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The point is that paper is a remnant of the analog world, the world the Bears once ruled when they won eight championships before the Super Bowl era. Williams, on the other hand, is a product of our perpetually online age. He wasn’t even born when Tom Brady was drafted, and he marches to the beat of his own drum. The 22-year-old gets ready for games by listening to the very un-Zoomer John Legend’s Ordinary People, which is… a choice. Pushing the boundaries of fashion, he infamously posed for GQ in a red dress with white gym socks and sneakers. That didn’t go down well with old-school football fans. “I’m not taking him with my #1 pick,” a Barstool sports commentator posted on TikTok. ‘I’m not even going to explain it. I’ll trade the choice.’
And keyboard crusaders went crazy again when Williams showed up to a USC women’s basketball game this month with painted fingernails to match his pink iPhone and wallet — which some predictably took as a sign that Williams might be gay and thus unfit to be the face of an N.F.L. franchise. (It doesn’t matter that Williams has a girlfriend and that Carl Nassib has also proven how few people actually care about the sexuality of professional football players.) ‘The most important qualities of a leader are having self-confidence, being safe with yourself, being courageous and everyone to have. you lead, I want to follow you,” NFL Network’s Kyle Brandt said in Williams’ defense.
Like many modern paragons of masculinity, Williams often paints his fingernails for a little extra flair, sometimes with subtle messages intended for his opponents. FUCK UTAH, which he wrote for a 2022 game against the Utes, was less subtle, however, and was doomed to live in infamy after Williams left USC without beating the Utes once. It makes Bears legend Jim McMahon’s taunting headbands look strange by comparison.
Williams isn’t just being irreverent. He is unstoppable and takes to social media to find writers who have the audacity to suggest that he “has never known adversity‘ – which is their way of suggesting that he goes against the stereotype of the black athlete. Williams was also one of the first college football stars to take advantage of the transfer portal, moving to USC from Oklahoma expressly to further develop under coach Lincoln Riley and also prepare for the professional game under QB whisperer Kliff Kingsbury, the former head man of the Arizona Cardinals. now conducting the Washington Commanders attack. Until a few months ago, there was speculation that Williams would cast his lot with Kingsbury and DC – his hometown franchise that will pick second in this year’s draft – a more likely landing spot than Chicago, where he reportedly had no interest in playing.
All of this deepened Bears fans’ loyalty to Justin Fields, the quarterback the team drafted with the 11th pick just three years ago. When Chicago hosted Atlanta on New Year’s Eve, 62,000 fans at Chicago’s Soldier Field sang, “We want Fields” as he led the Bears to a 37-17 victory. The route to the Bears’ suburban practice facility was lined with campaign signs that read “In Justin We Trustin’.” But in March, Chicago shipped Fields to Pittsburgh, essentially freeing up space to land Williams — who even makes Fields, a typical young football player with a point to prove, look like an old cheapskate.
Williams could have turned pro at the end of his Heisman season in 2022, but chose to stay in school to avoid being picked first by Carolina – the Clampetts to the Astor-like Bears. (And given the mess the team got into last season, who wouldn’t say it wasn’t the right decision?) He was criticized for the decision, made on the advice of father Carl – who, among other things, is He points out quickly realizes that his son, already the top NIL earner in college sports, will be motivated by more than just money. In fact, rumors last July that Carl had asked potential agents if they felt comfortable negotiating with NFL teams over ownership stakes were all but confirmed when league owners voted to ban “non-family employees” from owning shares in teams to take. “He would almost be better off not getting drafted than being drafted first,” Carl told GQ in February. “The system is completely backwards.”
Since then, league insiders have dismissed Carl as a bad influence — no surprise considering the NFL draft is essentially a lurid TV show about black fatherlessness. And for too many armchair pundits, his Zoomer son seems as out of place with the Bears as a 90-inch plasma screen in a Victorian drawing room (above the fireplace, where the Rembrandt once had a place of honor), while some feared Williams. could be as big a failure as the USC Todd Marinovich laboratory project.
If Williams is overly criticized, it’s because there isn’t much to criticize when it comes to his actual talent. During his college career, he was touted time and time again as the second coming of Patrick Mahomes, adept at running plays as they were drawn up and improvising when things broke down. Like Mahomes, Williams can make every throw you can think of, and quite a few you can’t — or, as one scout calls them, the “holy shit” throws. As the draft approaches, professional talent evaluators are comparing him to Aaron Rodgers — another QB known for, ahem, doing things differently, and a man the Bears are eerily familiar with.
Perhaps a decade ago, when Bears football was still built around bellcorunners, hero linebackers and other Monsters of the Midway, they would have been the last team to use a top pick on a generational passer — let alone one with Black and Native American ancestry. (Some of us Bears fans are old enough to remember the slim margins that black stars like Vince Evans and Kordell Stewart received among the team’s broader support.)
But while football fans outside Chicago weren’t watching, the Bears did something many never thought possible: They evolved. They no longer let family members run the franchise or be usurped by the hot young GM prospect and handed the reins to Chiefs front office grinder Ryan Poles – who, by the way, is also black. (Egadenwhat would Papa Bear be think!) Poland has been given unprecedented authority to move the team of Fields and other popular players and rebuild it around new faces like Williams and Keenan Allen, a confident receiver who arrived via trade with the Los Angeles Chargers last month. It’s almost as if Poland knows what he’s looking for in a championship team, something Bears fans haven’t experienced since Mike Ditka and Buddy Ryan were both carted off the field after a near-flawless season in 1985.
What is most encouraging is that, despite reports to the contrary, Williams is not fair want to to be in Chicago; he didn’t hesitate to laugh the bizarre outfits Fans are speculating that he could wear this on draft day. “Wait until; y’all see the designer day suit and my lady dress,” he wrote in response to an outfit guess, the geisha-inducing cover image of Young Thug’s 2016 mixtape.
The world may not be ready for a perception-bending star QB who is so supremely self-obsessed. But the league’s most hidden franchise has only gotten so far by sticking to tradition. If anything, Williams is pointing them in a direction that’s closest to the future.