There wasn’t any one moment this season when Rome Odunze felt like he’d built enough chemistry with his quarterback, fellow Bears rookie Caleb Williams.
There may never be, at any point in their careers.
“You gotta go out there and prove it on the field,” the receiver said this week. “We have to continue to do that … Kind of like Davante Adams and Aaron Rodgers, they have to go out and prove that every single Sunday, too. And they continue to do so.
“Even though we’re at the inception of our duo, you still have to prove it.”
The Bears envisioned Williams and Odunze would become one of the best young quarterback-receiver pairings in the NFL — though maybe not to the extent of the former Packers-turned-Jets —when they drafted the former first and the latter ninth in April.
The two have shown flashes of that this season — Odunze caught a 50-50 ball for 30 yards on fourth-and-1 Sunday — but not often enough to avoid a nine-game losing streak. Odunze fumbled twice in the first quarter of Sunday’s 34-17 loss to the Lions, once on a fly sweep handoff from Williams, another after a 19-yard catch.
Perhaps that’s why Odunze, who is rarely short on words, gave a stilted answer when asked how he evaluated his rookie season.
“I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “We still got games to go. I can’t really encapsulate it yet.”
Through 15 games, Odunze’s performance has fallen just shy of Marvin Harrison Jr., the Ohio State receiver that so many Bears fans pined for and who was picked fourth by the Cardinals. In 15 games, Harrison Jr. has 51 catches on 100 targets for 726 yards. Odunze has 51 catches on 95 passes for 701. Harrison has seven touchdowns to Odunze’s three, though. Harrison is fourth in receiving yards among rookie receivers, Odunze fifth. The Jaguars’ Brian Thomas has a league-high 1,088 rookie receiving yards.
Neither Harrison nor Thomas has had to break in a rookie quarterback the way Odunze has. The good news is that he and Williams can grow together. The bad news has been self-evident this season, as the Bears’ offense has struggled to find consistency on and off the field. Williams is on his third different offensive coordinator and second different play-caller.
“I think Rome has been consistent from Day 1,” interim head coach Thomas Brown said. “The ball hasn’t always found him throughout the year as far as his role in kind of how it plays out from a progression standpoint.
“But when he’s had an opportunity to make plays, the guy constantly shows up.”
Williams has seen that, even though Odunze ranks third on the team in catches and targets and second in receiving yards.
“Being able to have him here and grow with him and our relationship over the years is going to be vital, I think, for the team,” Williams said. “So I’ve been able to be able to continue that and continue to grow that. [It] is going to be really fun — and really vital.”
NOTE: The Bears held a walk-through Tuesday and estimated their player’s participation for a real practice. Guard Teven Jenkins (calf). safety Elijah Hicks (ankle/foot), running back Travis Homer (hamstring) and tight end Marcedes Lewis (rest) were among the players who would have sat out.
