Caleb Williams Is Already Showing His High Potential

The work the Bears did over the spring and summer to get their rookie QB up to speed is paying off. The No. 1 pick talks about his preparation, his progress and keeping track of what critics say about him.

Williams has hit the ground running as he becomes the new face of a legendary NFL franchise / Daniel Bartel-USA TODAY Sports

On Wednesday, Chicago Bears coaches had Caleb Williams sipping Lou Anarumo information from a firehose. The Cincinnati Bengals’ defensive coordinator is known for throwing a lot at a quarterback, both in his defensive structures and his blitz packages. And with Anarumo and a proud, veteran group coming to town for a joint practice Thursday, OC Shane Waldron and the staff needed to give their rookie starter a primer just to get the most out of the session.

Williams left work that night at a point where, in the words of one coach, he “kind of got it.”

Upon returning Thursday for morning meetings, somehow, he had it down cold.

That Williams is already that guy might be surprising to some. But keep asking around with the Bears’ coaches, front office people, staffers and anyone else working here, and you’ll quickly see it shouldn’t be.

Really, it’s this simple: Williams isn’t who you think. You see the Oklahoma star gone Hollywood Heisman, with painted fingernails and a daredevil style. They see the guy who’ll do anything for a teammate, who treats people down the org chart the same way he might coach Matt Eberflus, and is as into the minutiae of football as he is the highlight plays he’s known for. You may see how he practiced on Thursday. They know how he prepared to do it.

Even more interesting, Williams seems to have no interest in correcting those narratives that have followed him, and how they have grown as the spotlight has intensified—and he’s gone from top-rated college recruit, to true freshman starter at Oklahoma, to USC matinee idol, to, now, a flagship NFL franchise’s next designated savior.

“I know who I am,” Williams says, in a quiet moment in the Bears’ facility, after a scorching hot August camp practice. “I know what I like. I know what I like to do. I know where I like to go. I think that’s the first part—knowing who I am. The second part would be, I learned at a young age, I can’t make everybody happy.

But he also knows that, in the years to come, he’ll have a chance to make a lot of people happy in America’s third-largest city. He’s aware that there’s truly only one way to make that happen. As his work overnight on Wednesday would indicate, he has a pretty good idea of how to make it happen, too.

And if those on the outside don’t care to see that, that’s fine.

Williams shrugs. They can think what they want to think.

---

Twenty-one teams down on my camp trip, and lots to cover this week. So in The Takeaways, we’ve got for you …

• How the second QB taken in the draft, Jayden Daniels, is earning the starting spot for the Washington Commanders.

• What the Atlanta Falcons’ trade with the New England Patriots for Matthew Judon means for both franchises. 

• Why it’s a big week for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterbacks.

But we’re starting with the first overall pick, preconceived notions, and a kid from a new generation that doesn’t care to engage in said notions.

---

Let’s begin with a key distinction: While Williams said he doesn’t take the criticism to heart, he did not say that he doesn’t hear it. He does. In fact, he actually seeks it out.

“The other part, and this feeds into knowing myself, is all athletes try to act like they don’t see it. I see it, and I use it,” Williams says. “I take screenshots of people. People don’t know it. I have notes and things that I screenshot. I save the links, all of that. I use it.”

And he does it for a reason.

“There’s always something,” he continues. “LeBron [James] always says, and has said before, he only needs one thing. He walks into the stadium, all he needs is one fan, one thing through the week or before the game. Some of it is motivation and some of it is psyching yourself out. That’s the other part. It’s knowing myself. It’s knowing what I like to know, how I like to do things. I know how hard I work. I know the confidence that I have, from my work that I’ve put in for many, many years now.”

He won’t say exactly what’s in those notes, tucked in a corner of his iPhone, but it’s fair to say that, the past couple of years, a football-obsessed public gave him a lot of material to work with.

There was the hysteria over his unique, Gen Z–infused style. The painted fingernails, which at one point had a colorful, biting message for Pac-12 rival Utah on them, drew attention (they were actually a tribute to his mom). The pink iPhone case and wallet got more (he later pointed out the wallet in question was actually white).

Then, there was what followed his father, Carl, around—the idea that his pops was a Little League dad on steroids. The Bears dug into that at the very beginning of the draft process, when they interviewed Kliff Kingsbury, then a USC assistant, now the Commanders’ OC, for their coordinator job. Kingsbury told Eberflus and GM Ryan Poles that while Carl Williams may be involved with his son’s off-field ventures, he only saw the dad once at the Trojans’ practice facility, illustrating how hands off he was with his kid’s football matters.

That was affirmed again and again as the Bears kept investigating. Yet, neither Caleb nor Carl Williams ever cared to correct the story line publicly. There was a reason for that, too.

“My dad and I talk often, very often,” Caleb says. “We’re always on the same page. That’s my guy. I know he has my back, so I don’t ever waver, but I always do remind [people] that it always falls on me, and there may be better ways to go about things. That’s the biggest thing, making sure we handle it right, so I don’t have to deal with this stuff. There’s going to be times where things come out that aren’t true, things that I may have to handle myself. …

“[But] we know how hard we go about things. He’s a very smart man. We don’t try to break rules. We don’t try to do things the wrong way. We just try to make sure we get in the best possible position for myself and my family. There are no rules being broken. There’s just trying to find the right way to do it. If it hasn't been done, that doesn’t faze us.”

That’s why, in so many cases, the other side of the story doesn’t get told.

The other side is how a piece of his decision making in opting out of the Holiday Bowl on Dec. 27, before he’d even officially declared for the draft, was to give his backup, Miller Moss, a shot to showcase his talents. Williams knew that the Trojans were scouring the transfer portal for a quarterback, and that the bowl game would be an invaluable chance for Moss to show the coaches what they already had. Moss, for what it’s worth, threw for 372 yards and six touchdowns, and now is entrenched as USC’s starter for 2024.

The other side is how he decided to throw at USC’s pro day, after making business decisions to skip medicals, throwing drills and athletic testing at the combine, because he knew it was better for his teammates trying to impress NFL folks that day, including his close friend, and top receiver, Brenden Rice. Rice and fellow wideout Tahj Washington wound up being drafted in the seventh round, by the Los Angeles Chargers and Miami Dolphins, respectively.

The other side may be best shown in how Williams took his NIL money and flew eight offensive linemen with him to New York for the Heisman ceremony in 2022, another example of not just being a good guy, but also understanding his place as the quarterback.

“I’ve been around guys like that, elite competitors,” Eberflus says. “They’re very good at what they do, and they have very good clarity of who they are. They’re able to look at their weaknesses and look and see where they can improve, and also look at the other guys and say, Hey, I know this receiver can do this and do that. I understand the limitations of that, but I also understand the strengths.

“He’s very comfortable in his own skin. I think he really leans on the foundation of his family for that and also his own belief in himself. That’s why he’s able to be who he is. He cares about what his family thinks, what his coaches think, and what he thinks.”

And it’s with that focus that he, and the Bears, have attacked the past six months.

---

Williams began absorbing new information long before he walked in the door for training camp / Sam Greene/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK

What happened last week, ahead of the practice with the Bengals, was no isolated incident.

It’s been happening, and the Bears have gotten a front-row seat for it, going all the way back to when they first zeroed in on Williams as the first pick in the winter. More than just that, they’ve been able to take advantage of it, with a kid who can’t seem to get enough football.

This part of the story really starts with Chicago launching a plan to allow for Williams to hit the ground running after his selection became official in late April. The Bears felt like they didn’t have time to waste. Eberflus and Poles were headed into their third year in charge, and coming off a 5–3 finish to a 7–10 season. The roster was dotted with accomplished young vets, looking to build on how they closed 2023.

So as soon as they locked in on Williams as the first pick, right around the combine, after accelerating the process of vetting him, they could start to dive in. The first step was getting together with Dr. Scott Goldman, a sports psychologist for the Golden State Warriors, who administers the AIQ intelligence test to prospects.

“I spent a lot of time with him,” Eberflus says. “I spent like an hour and a half just on how Caleb learns. He was telling me how he learns. I’d say, If we did this and we did this, would this be right for him? He was like, Eh, no.”

While Eberflus laughed saying that, the truth was that he and the Bears tried to be diligent in learning how Williams learned best, so they could execute their plan for the run-up to the draft the right way. They’d then add that to what Williams knew, and what he didn’t, from his three years playing for Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma and USC, which they were able to leverage through the vetting, and one-on-one time Eberflus had with Riley.

From there, they sequenced what they wanted to teach Williams, from his pro day on March 20 to his 30 visit at Halas Hall on April 2, to the three, one-hour Zooms they were allowed with him, which landed between the 30 visit and the draft. Knowing the pro day would be a whirlwind (as we detailed back on May 6), Eberflus, Waldron and the staff wanted to use that time just to give him an introduction to what they’d ask of him in the weeks to come.

Then, when Williams came to the Midwest two weeks later for the 30 visit, they really got the work off the ground. Used to going no-huddle, on a clap cadence and off sideline signals, Williams was immediately immersed in the arts of calling a play in the huddle and using a verbal cadence. Meanwhile, since Williams’s private coach, Will Hewlett, had a relationship with Waldron from the QB Collective camp, the Bears were able to feed the trainer with their terminology for routes, formations and motions to teach back to Williams.

In the Zoom calls, they started, effectively, installing Waldron’s offense with Williams, focusing, again, on terminology, formations, motions and cadence. And that was Williams’s baseline when he reported for rookie minicamp in May. Williams, for his part, swears he didn’t know the Bears were taking him for sure. In time, though, it became a bit obvious.

“When it started getting down to the wire, I kind of had an idea,” Williams says, smiling. “Those moments that I had, and we had, building a foundation, talking about stuff, how [Waldron] runs plays, the formations and all of that terminology was huge. It’s a new language. It’s a new everything. They planned on me coming here and starting and playing. So getting that base was huge.”

OTAs and the veteran minicamp in the spring were spent building off the foundation, rather than having to set it, which gave Williams and Waldron a shot to start to work on what the offense would look like tailored specifically for the rookie quarterback. Having vets on that side of the ball—such as Keenan Allen, DJ Moore, Cole Kmet and Teven Jenkins—who know how the NFL sausage is made and could be a resource to Williams, didn’t hurt either.

And after that, during the five-week break between the offseason program and training camp, Waldron worked with Hewlett to put together a plan for Williams to get valuable hours in over the summer that would cement so much of what he’d already learned, and also get to the best place possible with his mechanics and, in particular, his drops.

Waldron and quarterbacks coach Kerry Joseph gave Hewlett the way they teach drops from under center. They also told Hewlett and Williams, according to Hewlett, that, “If Caleb gets to it a way that fits the timing and he’s more comfortable with, we can mesh that together.”

“The big thing for Caleb, this was even transitioning from USC to the offseason program, sometimes for athletes of his level, their greatest gift’s a curse for them in some capacity,” Hewlett said. “He’s one of the most elite compensators I’ve ever worked with. He can adapt in any situation. He can always get it done. Going to the NFL, we want to take the approach from a true pro-style—I need to be on time. I need to play within the structure of the offense and save my baller mode for when I truly need it, instead of living off that.”

As a result, Hewlett said, “The last three days he was here before he left for the Bears was the best I’ve ever seen him throw. Period.” And Hewlett’s had Williams since seventh grade.

Even better, the Bears-specific stuff he went back to work on had sunk in. Going into the rookie minicamp in May, he knew the base formations, routes, run alerts and cadence. Coming back for training camp in July, he had ownership of all of that, showing command of the huddle, his cadence and the play call.

“That summer break was huge.” Williams says. “It was heavy going through the flash cards, heavy going through pass plays. I restarted my notebook two times over. I rewrote my notebook two times from the spring during that 40-day period. I have an actual notebook and I have an iPad. I rewrote the paper notebook, and I rewrote all of that on the iPad. That was huge—saying it out loud to myself when nobody’s around, visualizing all the plays, visualizing the motions, visualizing the protections, visualizing getting in the huddle and speaking to those guys.”

The result? At the start of camp, the way Williams ran the huddle, led his teammates and took ownership of the offense, in the words of one coach, “looked like pro football.”

That sounds easy. But for rookie quarterbacks, getting there usually isn’t. It also showed Williams’s teammates his commitment and work ethic, his football IQ and his urgency in wanting to give Chicago’s vets a chance to win not just in 2025 or ’26, but now.

Which is another thing that you might not know watching highlights.

Most, of course, because Williams doesn’t care much for other people knowing about it.

---

On Saturday, a Williams throw went viral on social media. It was near the end of the first half against the Bengals. The Bears’ quarterback dropped back, spun to his left away from pressure, then flung the ball off-balance and against his body, 45 yards downfield to fellow rookie Rome Odunze. It showed a lot of what made him the first pick.

But those plays aren’t what excite the Bears most about the offseason he’s had. They, and everyone else, knew Williams could do that stuff. It’s the more routine, the more mundane, that gets the Bears fired up about where they are, four months after drafting the former USC star.

“His spatial awareness, his understanding of the field, his ability to recall, we really got a chance to see it in the first [preseason] game on the sideline,” Waldron says. “Each play as we’re going through and recapping the drive, he can tell you what all 11 people on defense were doing each snap, the why he got to on each read, the why on when he went to a scramble versus two-man. Seeing that part of it and hearing that recall just shows you where his football IQ is at.

“All the other stuff is just a matter of when we talk about the offensive system, cadence. All those things, that’s repetition. The understanding of the game, he’s got that part down.”

Eberflus adds: “We laughed about it the other day: Remember when you were at USC when you learned that first play. And he’s like, Yeah. How about now? We just laughed. Coach, I had no idea.”

Now, he does. And most of that came together when no one was paying attention.

Here’s another story on that.

The other day at practice, after the Bears got their work done, Williams looked over to the family area and spotted assistant offensive line coach Jason Houghtaling with his wife and kids. Realizing he hadn’t had a chance to meet them yet, he peeled off from what he was doing and went over to introduce himself. It was a little thing, but also the right thing, and about nothing else than just that—doing the right thing.

If no one saw him do it, then great.

If people on the outside don’t see him for who he is, that’s O.K., too.

“It comes down to he’s totally comfortable in his own skin,” Waldron says. “The values that his parents instilled in him growing up and the way he handles himself around everybody, it’s really, really confident. It’s really, really respectful, and it’s always genuine. Everyone feels that, that’s around him. It’s allowed him to connect with teammates early on. It’s the same thing with whatever the narratives may have been, the interactions that I’ve had with him since the pro day on, you see that he’s a great person and he’s a great competitor.”

Williams, for his part, says his goal is to be the same guy every day. He says he’s learned through his own ups and downs that having that level of consistency is key. “Being able to fight back and get up and go do it again and lead the guys, I think I’ve had moments in my life that have prepared me for those times,” he says.

These times, of course, are different from those. But Williams hasn’t changed. Maybe, sometime soon, the rest of us will figure that out.