Bear Digest

Bears Passing Combination Aims to Tackle Pressure Head On

Caleb Williams knows the pressure will be to build a passing connection with Rome Odunze and others quickly but says he's entirely comfortable handling it.

Gene Chamberlain

Rome Odunze holds up his 15 jersey and Caleb Williams his 18. The Bears passing duo was at Halas Hall for their first press conference Friday.
Rome Odunze holds up his 15 jersey and Caleb Williams his 18. The Bears passing duo was at Halas Hall for their first press conference Friday. / David Banks-USA TODAY Sports
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Caleb Williams and Rome Odunze arrived at Halas Hall together Friday to initiate the new era of passing offense by the Bears, but first things first.

They held up their new jersey numbers, posed for photos; Williams' No. 18 because he wore it in high school and veteran Keenan Allen got 13, Odunze's 15 because he wore it in youth football.

Williams, it seems, has had no problem following Justin Fields' popularlity. In fact, he did it one better.

"Fanatics, I guess I believe it was, it came out that I passed Caitlin Clark's record," he said, referring to jersey sales. "I had to repost it and said, "I guess that's Chicago for you. That's probably my answer to that.

"All the love and support is strong. I've heard about it. So to get some of that love and support that early is really awesome. It's really exciting."

Enough for the popularity contests. Of course they're popular. They haven't thrown an interception into coverage or dropped a TD pass.

The real issue is turning around an offense so mired that they ranked 32nd and 27th the last two years in pass attempts event though they were a 10-24 team for those years. Think about it, teams trailing or losing usually are among the teams throwing it more because they're behind, and the Bears can't even get above 27th in passes. Sure, their running game was good, but this is the 2020s.

Welcome to the century, Bears.

It's not going to be easy to convince people the Bears can change their stripes, but neither of these two believes anything but succcess can happen.

"I come from (Washington) where people thought 'how can you have an offense like we did?' Odunze said. "No. 1 passing offense in the nation when it rains like that? And how can you compete through those conditions?

"People say it's cold and it's not the environment to have success out here in Chicago. For me, I don't have that mindset at all. To be able to come in here and for us to do exactly what we say we are going to do and that's to have a lot of success on offense and put points on the board to win games and play team-oriented football. We are going to play our part to a tee on the offensive side of the ball and everybody's perception I think will continue to shift."

It's simply a matter of the pieces coming together and forget about the past, Odunze said.

"It really reminds me of all the key pieces that I had in college and the pieces coming together for the incredible seasons that we had (in 2023)," Odunze said. "It really has that same feeling, having so many weapons on offense, bringing in a guy like Caleb at the helm of it all allows us to do so many different things."

Odunze is merely the pass catcher. The Bears have had decent receivers at times.

The part of the passing game they fail at is the quarterback. The pressure will be high for Williams as the first pick of the draft, but especially because he's supposed to be the savior of a miserable passing game.

"I don't think I think about it, to be honest with you," Williams said. "I think about just doing my job, handling the things that I can handle, dealing with the small things, holding everybody accountable and everybody holding me accountable, showing up to work every day ready to go and to have fun doing."

No quarterback comes into the league as a rookie without growing pains. Well, none except C.J. Stroud it seems.

"If growing pains do come around, it happens with a lot of players," Williams said. "You deal with it in that moment. You handle it, but I don’t think about it."

It's easy to say now but the pressure has had plenty of past quarterbacks ducking for cover. Mitchell Trubisky was begging to have the TVs turned off in Halas Hall to keep out the negativity.

"What's the reason to duck?" Williams said. "It's here. There's no reason to duck. I'm here. Rome's here. Keenan Allen, the top-five defense that we had last year, special teams, all the new roles–whatever.

"We're here. I'm excited. I know everybody’s excited. The Bears fans are excited from what I’ve heard and seen, and there's no reason to duck. Attack it head first and go get it."

GRADING THE FIRST DAY OF THE BEARS DRAFT

Many have said it before, but with Williams you get the impression it can happen.

"I'm always going to have scrutiny," Williams said. "I do things like paint my nails. I'm always going to have scrutiny over that. I wear funky clothes, things like that.

"So you know, just do my job on the football field and win games. I think if you win a bunch of games here, you'll make a lot of people, the majority, happy."

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.