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.
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.
“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.
Let’s begin with a key distinction: While Williams said he doesn’t take the criticism to heart, he did“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.”“There’s always something,” he continues. “LeBron always says, and has said before, he only needs one thing.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.” “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.
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