NFL Open Thread: Come on Feel the Illinoise edition
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The most-talked about NFL-related writing of the season is this three-part breakdown of the Caleb Williams Experience:
Highlight reels failed to capture his signature move as a professional quarterback. Cameras weren’t flashing and sycophants weren’t hyperventilating. But, yes, Caleb Williams was able to master one signature move as a rookie last season.
In college, he’d juke and spin and escape helpless defenders with hypnotic flair. He was an artist coloring outside the lines and this 53 1/3-yard wide, 120-yard long field was his personal canvas. But in the pros, such sorcery was scarce. In the pros, he’s been escaping a different setting with remarkable precision and consistency.
The most dramatic spectacle of them all occurred on Dec. 26. His team was hosting the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday Night Football. Commercials rolled during a timeout, so nobody at home saw this poignant moment that perfectly summarized the 2024 Chicago Bears. In the wake of two firings, heartbreaking defeats, staggering to the finish line of an agonizing 5-12 season, interim head coach Thomas Brown tried to explain something to his starting quarterback and… no. Williams was not having it.
An auto-response kicked in.
As he had done many times to many coaches all season, Williams turned his head and walked away. Shane Waldron, before getting fired as offensive coordinator, used to stay quiet. Not Brown. Not a stern, blunt, old-school coach who believed this 22-year-old crossed a line of disrespect. The typically calm coach lost it. On the headset, another Bears assistant coach recalls Brown pressing the mic to finish his conversation: “Get your ass back here right now! Don’t fucking walk away when I’m talking to you!”
Unfazed, Williams sashayed away. Right back to the huddle.
The Bears lost, 6-3.
While the primary source of the article is his frustrated coaches, it’s not like they come off looking good either, and perhaps worst of all is Bears GM Ryan Poles, who pretty much treated the draft process like the Bush administration treated intelligence about Iraq once he had decided that Williams was his guy. It reminds me of the story about the end of the road for Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy, where everyobody held everyone else in contempt and everybody was right.
None of this is too say that Williams can be written off entirely, but Ben Johnson definitely picked a real challenge for himself.