Bear Digest

Another Caleb Williams Hit Job from the Same Old Source

Analysis: Another off-base analysis by former NFL player of Caleb Williams shows it's easy to bring down even the best when you focus on the worst.

Gene Chamberlain

Caleb Williams tries to elude the Notre Dame pass rush.
Caleb Williams tries to elude the Notre Dame pass rush. / Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
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At least Dan Orlovsky is consistent, if nothing else.

The ESPN analyst continues to rail on Caleb Williams as the top pick in the 2024 NFL Draft for the Bears and tout the virtues of LSU's Jayden Daniels.

His latest rant occurred during the Pat McAfee Show on ESPN and consisted of the same diatribe he has stuck with throughout the run up to the draft. Once again, he complained about Williams' inability to stay in the pocket and throw, and problems holding onto the ball too long while being destroyed by Notre Dame's defense.

In various comments made in different locations throughout the internet and on television, Orlovsky has repeated the same critique over and over as he warns against taking Williams. And it ALWAYS comes back to the Notre Dame game last year. This was the game when he completed 23 of 37 for 199 yards with a TD and three interceptions.

It wasn't his greatest day, this is certain.

However, Williams actually played against Notre Dame the previous year and completed 18 of 22 for 232 yards and a touchdown, while getting the Trojans into scoring territory so often that he was able to run for three touchdowns himself while rushing for 35 yards.

Rushing for TDs is something Williams does quite well, although he often receives criticsm for not sliding. He ran for 27 TDs in college, which was eight more than Justin Fields did at Ohio State.

This game is never brought up by Orlovsky, the man who once ran out of the back of his own end zone while playing for the Lions without being touched. And he didn't do it on purpose. Yes, it's that same Orlovsky who once said Justin Fields wasn't a hard worker, before Fields spent practically every waking hour at Halas Hall for the past three years.

Williams went into that Notre Dame loss riding a real high but doing it behind a shaky line, with a less talented receiver group than the year before. His brilliance had propped up the Trojans in a 6-0 start to the season against weaker teams.

The less talented Trojans didn't hold up against the Irish or against Utah the next week when Williams still completed 70.6% for 256 yards in a loss. They lost five of the last six. He threw nine TDs with four interceptions in the final seven games.

Let's just focus on the one really bad game he had, and not the three-TD effort and 312 yards with 77.1% completed against Washington last year, the team that played for a national championship.

Orlovsky has been singing this same tune about Williams since late last year.

Mr. Contrarian.

There is the six-TD, game against Colorado, five TDs against Nevada, three against Arizona State without an interception in any of those games. No picks against Washington, Oregon or Utah but let's bring up the Notre Dame game and not the one against the Irish the previous year when Williams was so good with a good team that he won the Heisman.

Everyone is entitled to a bad game and as bad as Williams was in the game against Notre Dame, his teammates were worse. He was also backed by one of the worst defenses in the NCAA. The whole team found out together they weren't as good as the previous year when they ran up against Notre Dame. When they found themselves against even better teams than Notre Dame later, Williams was outstanding. That was the Washington game.

Orlovsky favors the Bears drafting Daniels, who absorbs hits like he's a crash dummy and had a stretch of six games to close his junior year when he threw for only 183 yards per contest.

So Daniels had his bad stretch the previous year when his team wasn't as good. But Orlovsky doesn't mention those games when talking about Daniels, just the bad stretch and bad game by Williams when his team had soured.

There's an easy solution here.

Orlovsky simply needs some new videos besides that Notre Dame game that he keeps harping about. Send him some.

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.

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