Bear Digest

Significance of Anonymous Scouts' comments on Caleb Williams

Analysis: Unnamed scouts have said plenty about Caleb Williams in recently posted articles and here's what it all means.

Gene Chamberlain

Teammates only say good things about Caleb Williams, which leads some scouts to wonder why they can't get dirt on him.
Teammates only say good things about Caleb Williams, which leads some scouts to wonder why they can't get dirt on him. / Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports
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Second thoughts at the last minute are natural before a marriage.

It's likely the Bears are well beyond this stage with their upcoming marriage to a new quarterback, Caleb Williams. If not, it's possible Justin Fields would still be in Chicago.

There is still plenty of dissenting talk regarding Williams floating about, and it doesn't all come from Merril Hoge or ESPN's Dan Orlovsky as the Bears prepare to take the QB No. 1 overall.

Unnamed scouts' comments have surfaced feeding the fears of those opposed to drafting Williams while at the same time underscoring the main reasons the Bears have seemed destined to take him since back in late February or early March. Of course the scouts and personnel people can't use their names because of the nature of their jobs.

The comments in totality add up to little and sound more like people frustrated by failed attempts to get teammates or friends to reveal anything negative about the USC QB.

No stronger an assessment of Williams' abilities came from anyone than the one from an unnamed NFC East scout in a prediction article based on scouts' picks by ESPN's Matt Miller.

"He's too dynamic, too poised and too talented to pass up," the scout told Miller.

And the kicker: "Caleb is the most likely player in this class to become a Hall of Famer. That's the dude I want."

One of the great fears about Williams' play is his tendency to go off script. They think he holds the ball too long looking for big plays.

It's the main reason Hoge and Orlovsky dislike his play so much. Orlovsky loves focusing on the 2023 Notre Dame loss in his assessments.

One NFL offensive coach told ESPN's Jeremy Fowler they're cherry picking film to support perceived problems.

"Go back to Oklahoma and early USC with Jordan Addison (still at USC) and he played on time," the coach said. "He has that gear and will be willing to do that, I believe. His supporting cast was not as good (last year) so he had to make some things happen."

The article by Fowler, a ranking of the QB class, has Williams No. 1 with a consensus comparison of each QB to NFL QBs.

Williams most' mentioned comparison is Aaron Rodgers.

"He makes holy s--- throws," an AFC scout in the same article said, adding for Fowler that Williams lacks any glaring weakness.

The main weaknesses being pointed out by scouts are more petty or what Pro Football Hall of Fame writer Dan Pompei called intagibles in an article quoting unnamed personnel people for The Athletic. 

In other words, they're chipping away at him over how he was seen crying in his mother's arms over the loss to Washington last year, how he paints his fingernails and things of this nature. They sound somewhat like the criticism he gets on the internet for lacking "toughness," because of his personality.

One scout told Pompei that Williams' toughness is yet to be determined for the NFL.

"...But when you end up sobbing in your mom's arms after getting beat, that's a disqualifier for people who aren't picking in the top few picks," the scout told Pompei.

Some of greatest criticism of Williams came over how he treated the sacred cow of NFL personnel people, the scouting combine.

The fact he didn't submit to medical testing was a main complaint.

"It wasn't easy trying to get information on him," a scout told Pompei. "You had to dig.

"Everyone tries to protect him, which leads you to wonder what they are trying to hide. If he has been banged up, we don't know."

That's for everyone else to guess, however, and the Bears to know because they are the only team he has done the medical tests for when he came to Halas Hall. It totally becomes a moot point.

In Fowler's article, the scouts also expressed reservations with how Williams interviewed and behaved at the combine. Casually interested or lack of engagement on his part seemed to describe it.

However, one NFL executive told Fowler: "Even still, I think he's a smart kid, a good kid. He just knows where he's going."

If he knew he was going to the Bears, why would he care about the talks with other teams?

In the end, the Bears have done their research at this point and arrived at satisfactory conclusions. What the other teams and their scouts think is irrelevant.

It's the Bears' call on their own future that counts and there is one thing certain: If they suddenly decided they were going to take Jayden Daniels they would have a long line of NFL personnel people racing to get them to trade back in order to get Williams.

OFFER RYAN POLES WOULD HAVE HAD TO REFUSE IF IT WAS REAL

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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.

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