Caleb Williams wanted to avoid getting drafted by Bears, new book says

Caleb Williams and his father sought to avoid Williams getting drafted by the Bears in the 2024 NFL draft, ESPN’s Seth Wickersham details in a new book about quarterbacks, publishing in September.

“Chicago is the place quarterbacks go to die,” Williams’ father, Carl, said in the book.

With Williams being the clear-cut top pick coming out of USC, Carl told several agents in 2024 he didn’t want his son to play for the Bears, who had the No. 1 pick. Part of his efforts to avoid Chicago included consulting Archie Manning, father of Eli Manning, who helped orchestrate Eli’s trade from the San Diego Chargers to the New York Giants.

According to the book, Williams decided he wanted to be drafted by the Minnesota Vikings after connecting with Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell at the NFL Scouting Combine, but Bears general manager Ryan Poles told Williams that Chicago would be drafting him “no matter what.”

Williams was also deterred by the coaching staff in Chicago. “Do I want to go there? I don’t think I can do it with (former Bears offensive coordinator Shane) Waldron,” Williams said in the book.

Wickersham wrote that the father and son considered publicly attacking the Bears organization and the city of Chicago in order to prevent getting drafted there, but Williams was concerned that would only lead to more damage if the Bears refused to trade him.

Williams later changed his mind on the Bears after a predraft meeting, according to the book.

“I can do it for this team,” Caleb told his dad. “I’m going to go to the Bears.”

The Bears declined to comment on the book’s details about Williams and the draft.

Williams went on to have an up-and-down rookie season, completing 62.5% of his passes while tossing 20 touchdowns but also taking a league-most 68 sacks.

Waldron and coach Matt Eberflus were both fired midseason, and according to the book, Williams received little to no coaching at times.

“No one tells me what to watch,” Williams told his dad in the book about film sessions. “I just turn it on.”

Can things change for Chicago?

The way Williams’ rookie season went proved that the family’s concerns were prescient. Waldron will go down as one of the worst hires in franchise history, and that’s a high bar considering the Bears’ recent futility, as they’re on their fifth head coach since firing Lovie Smith.

It was apparent as early as Waldron’s opening news conference, followed by a plethora of hiccups in spring and summer practices, that this pairing was not going to flourish. The decision by Poles, president/CEO Kevin Warren and chairman George McCaskey to retain Eberflus is now back under fire, as Eberflus had the ultimate call on Waldron as his play caller.

What that all did was put Williams in the same predicament that he and his father wanted to avoid. He is the third Bears first-round quarterback to have to learn a new offense with a new coaching staff after his rookie season in the past seven years, joining Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields.

The most newsworthy element to this excerpt — and I’m interested in reading the full Williams chapter this fall — is how the quarterback himself felt, and his own concerns about the Bears. Fans could feel comforted that Williams decided, after his visit, that he wanted to embrace the challenge.

We could hear from Williams as soon as next week, when Bears OTAs get underway, and he might have to field a lot more questions about the past than the present. Williams has handled controversy in the spotlight very well. He’s pretty unfazed publicly, and I expect that to continue, but I will be curious how he wants to address those hesitations he had.

That brings us to a possible blessing in disguise in all this. If Ben Johnson proves to be the right hire for both Williams and the organization, and if he’s able to help put Williams in a position to be the franchise quarterback the Bears have sought, then the disaster that was 2024 will be a footnote. Everything that went wrong put the Bears in a position to reset with Johnson.

Here’s what Williams said during Johnson’s introductory press conference: “Once I got off the phone, I was driving on the highway, I don’t know if it was safe or not, but I gave out a loud yell and scream of just excitement of just brings a bunch of clarity to the offseason,” he said. “It brings a bunch of different things to the offseason. And I’m really excited about obviously the Bears and this org and being able to make this happen and keep Ben Johnson as our coach for a long time.”

Maybe it was a year too late, but the timing won’t matter as long as the coach and quarterback have success. If anything, Johnson has a blueprint of what not to do. — Kevin Fishbain, Bears beat writer

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