Bears news: Caleb Williams edition

There are 53 players on an active NFL roster, but the most important by far is the starting quarterback. Look around the league for proof. No team is succeeding in 2024 without a top signal-caller, from Josh Allen of the Bills to Lamar Jackson of the Ravens, Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs to Jalen Hurts of the Eagles.

Just in the NFC North alone, there are three quarterbacks playing excellent football. Jared Goff has become one of the most dependable and accurate QBs in the league. Sam Darnold has rejuvenated his career in Minnesota. And Jordan Love is getting it done with a largely unknown receiving corps. Together, those teams are 34-8 on the year.

Then there's the Chicago Bears, the proverbial redheaded stepchild of the division. To be a Bears fan is to know pain right now, as a once-promising 4-2 start has completely evaporated into an eight-game losing streak.

The Bears are quarterbacked by rookie Caleb Williams. Taken with the number one overall pick, Caleb was hailed as the savior when he replaced Justin Fields as the team's QB1, but he's endured a harsh welcome to the NFL, and not just because he traded in the sunny paradise of USC for the Windy City.

Caleb has shown so many flashes this year that easily explain why the Bears were so excited to take him at the top of the draft. No quarterback succeeds in a vacuum though, and Chicago's organizational incompetence has clearly hindered his growth.

Offensive coordinator Shane Waldron made it just nine games into the season before being fired. Matt Eberflus was so bad at game management that he was let go the day after Thanksgiving, the first time the Bears have ever fired a head coach midseason. Interim head coach Thomas Brown has been no better, as he's presided over two of the most lopsided losses of the season. Now there are reports that general manager Ryan Poles, the one who drafted Caleb, could be on the hot seat.

Top to bottom, it's been a true disaster of a season for the Bears, but through it all, Caleb has picked himself up off the turf again and again. Will he be the one to overcome what all evidence tells us is a curse on Bears quarterbacks? Or will the losing and organizational turnover win out over his prodigious talent?

With a 4-10 record and just three games left in the season, the Bears are going nowhere fast. There will be time to talk about draft positioning and the eventual search for a new head coach, but today we're focusing on the most important player on the Bears roster. This is Bears news: Caleb Williams edition.

Life imitates art with Caleb Williams

Twitter, or X, as it is for some reason now known, has in many ways gone downhill over the past couple of years. Take it up with Elon if you disagree, but it's true. Still, there are some rays of sunshine to be found among the hate speech, bots and ads for Cheech and Chong gummies.

The brightest of those rays may well be ArtButMakeItSports, my single favorite social media account out there. For anyone that hasn't heard of it, this account takes photos from the sports world and presents them next to an uncannily close analogue from the world of art, often going back to the Renaissance period or earlier.

It only sounds crazy until you've seen a few, then it all clicks. Allow me to demonstrate:

This was taken from the Bears-Vikings game that just took place on Monday Night Football. Here's another one:

Caleb Williams is many things, but stoic isn't one of them. He's an emotional player that wears his heart on his sleeve, for better or for worse. As he has in nearly every game he's played this season, he took some big hits against the Vikings, and it was clear by the end of the game that he was physically spent from the effort. This season has been exhausting for Bears fans around the world, so it's no surprise that it's also taking its toll on Caleb.

Disturbingly, the Bears have made a habit of getting their quarterbacks featured in compromised positions. Here's one last example of Justin Fields from 2021:

For any fan without a vested interest in the Bears, these are objectively hilarious. For Bears fans, we need to laugh to keep from crying.

Emmanuel Acho comes in strong with a bad Caleb Williams take

Emmanuel Acho is a divisive figure in the sports world, not only because he's unafraid to let loose with a hot take, but because he rarely backs down, even if sometimes it's a bad one. His latest take on Caleb Williams is unfortunately one of those that just don't pass the smell test.

Acho let loose on Caleb's body language during a recent episode of The Facility on FS1:

For Bears quarterbacks, it's clear that you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Justin Fields was often criticized for showing too little emotion, and now here we are watching Caleb get blasted for showing too much. Acho repeated three times that Caleb isn't a damsel, and he isn't in distress, leading one to wonder how many times he practiced that line in the mirror before letting it fly on air.

Acho criticized Caleb for taking too long to get up against the Lions on Thanksgiving after taking a hit, which forced Matt Eberflus to use a timeout. He bizarrely equated that with Eberflus not using his final timeout during the Bears' game-ending drive, which resulted in Eberflus being fired. What?

Caleb isn't looking for sympathy, as Acho implies. He's not looking to be rescued. He's an emotional guy that may not fit the steely-eyed platonic ideal of whatever Acho is looking for in his quarterback, but he's authentically himself, just as he was in college.

When your team is losing, everything looks bad. Laugh on the sidelines and it's not perceived as you trying to lighten the mood, it seems like you're not taking things seriously. Get in a teammate's face and you're not demanding excellence, you're a sore loser.

All of the things Caleb does will be held in a more positive light if the Bears can ever put a good team around him. Let's just hope that Acho is there to point that out, too.

Caleb Williams is setting records, both good and bad

Monday night's game against the Vikings was the eighth straight game in which Caleb has thrown zero interceptions. That extended his rookie record to 255 passes without a pick, far beyond the previous record of 212 set by Kyler Murray in 2019.

Caleb is also more than 63 percent of the way to Aaron Rodgers' overall record of passes without an interception. Rodgers went 402 throws without throwing it to the other team in 2018. Caleb is averaging about 33 passing attempts per game, which means he could conceivably break the record in Week 2 of next season if he keeps it up.

Turnover margin is arguably the number one deciding factor in who wins and loses NFL football games, but incredibly, the Bears are 0-8 during Caleb's streak. No other quarterback has ever gone more than five interception-less starts without a win.

Caleb has also done a great job of not fumbling, though he did cough one up on Monday when Vikings defensive end Jonathan Greenard blew past rookie left tackle Kiran Amegadjie and strip-sacked him.

Despite the fact that protecting the football isn't translating into wins, Caleb's ability to not turn the ball over is undoubtedly a good thing. He's also in the record books for a troubling stat, however.

After being sacked twice by the Vikings, Caleb has now been brought down 58 times on the year. That's 13 more than the next closest quarterback, CJ Stroud of the Texans. It's also the most times a Bears quarterback has ever been sacked in a season, and there are still three games to go.

Caleb still has a long way to go to catch David Carr for the rookie record of 76, but behind this Bears offensive line, anything is possible. If he plays all three games, he'll almost certainly end up on second place on the list, as he only needs five more to pass Bryce Young.

Caleb is on pace to be sacked 70 times, which would be the third-most in history. He's been beaten up all season, so maybe let's cut him a little slack if he looks a bit tired out there.