It’s a good time for Bears quarterback Caleb Williams to be headed back home.
He’ll return for a rare visit to the Washington, D.C., area on Sunday to face the Commanders — he momentarily forgot Wednesday that they’d changed their name two years ago — and he’ll do so looking very grown up for a 22-year-old rookie.
Williams hit his stride over the last three games, and the Bears feel better than ever about his future. He has become more authoritative on the practice field and more productive in games, and the trip home is another major opportunity for a step forward.
“Since I left high school, I haven’t been back other than one or two times, so being able to go back and share that experience is going to be great,” Williams said Wednesday. “It’s going to be fun. And to come out with a win is going to be most important.”
The only thing missing from the drama might be Williams’ rival-in-the-making Jayden Daniels.
The Commanders drafted Daniels second after the Bears took Williams first, but Daniels is in question for the game with a rib injury. So instead of a showdown between the last two Heisman Trophy winners, it could be Williams against 2014 winner Marcus Mariota.
Nonetheless, Williams’ upbringing in the D.C. area seemed like it always pointed to this type of moment. He immersed himself in football around age 9, just after moving from nearby Upper Marlboro, Maryland, to Bowie and had a much different childhood than his friends.
They weren’t waking up at 4 a.m. for workouts. They weren’t on a strict, sports-driven diet. They weren’t living on their own as a teenager.
That last part really was the most unique aspect of Williams’ experience. When his parents enrolled him at Gonzaga College High School, they got him an apartment in D.C. rather than fight the brutal commute from the suburbs.
He had near-total freedom, but instead of running wild, Williams only seemed to grow more into an adult.
“To be able to be on his own like that and really function and get to where he needs to be and take care of it, [raised] the maturity level,” Bears coach Matt Eberflus said, recalling the team’s background research on Williams leading up to the draft. “The experiences he’s been through has made him what he is today: a really experienced, more mature type of young man.”
Williams was upbeat about going back and was still working through how many tickets he’d have to buy beyond his regular allotment to accommodate family and friends at Northwest Stadium, which sits in the center of the three places he lived.
He has not played football there since graduating from Gonzaga, having just missed USC joining the Big Ten this season and playing at Maryland for the first time Saturday. Williams has heard quite a bit, by the way, from former Terrapin DJ Moore about his school’s 29-28 win.
Regardless, Williams hasn’t shown signs of there being any extra pressure this week. If anything, going back seems to be a comfort.
“They’re the best places to grow up,” he said. “You have all kinds of diversity, whether it’s people and where they’re from, whether it’s some of the schools, whether it’s the food and so much more.
“You’ve got all the monuments, historical facts and things like that. Growing up in the area provides a lot of information, provides a lot of growth, and it did that for me.”
With that as the backdrop, Williams is eying progress. And the Bears are looking at arguably their biggest game since the 2019 opener against the Packers. They and the Commanders both are currently in the playoff field, and it’s going to get increasingly difficult for the Bears to stay there as their schedule gets tougher.
Williams has a lot of input on where they go from here. As he struggled through the first three games, they started 1-2. As he got more efficient and confident, they won three in a row behind Williams’ 687 yards, seven touchdown passes, 74.1 completion percentage and 122.8 passer rating.
It’s a great starting point for Williams as he tries to “create history” by changing the Bears’ trajectory and helping them get to the playoffs for the first time in six years, but that’s all it is for now. Everyone at Halas Hall knows those three games were against some of the NFL’s worst defenses, and Williams needs to play even better to keep producing against better teams.
The Commanders aren’t overwhelming, but they’re 15th in points allowed. They’ve given up the third-highest opponent passer rating at 107.4, but have pressured quarterbacks at the 10th-best rate (26.1%) and have a savvy defensive-minded head coach in Dan Quinn.
Homecomings are only a joy when they’re triumphant, and a kid like Williams who grew up ever-unsatisfied and searching for the next achievement knows that. The side stories of playing at home, and perhaps even facing off against Daniels, won’t matter much without a win.