USC quarterback Caleb Williams reacts after a throw during an NFL Football Play Football Prospect Clinic with Special Olympics athletes, Wednesday, April 24, 2024 in Detroit.
Carlos Osorio/AP
DETROIT — The Bears’ next quarterback stood on a makeshift football field at the former site of Tiger Stadium on Wednesday and extended his right pinkie, which he painted silver. He said it will match his navy suit — which has silver accents — and the dress his girlfriend wears to Thursday night’s NFL draft.
Painting his nails helps Caleb Williams relax.
“I feel comfy in my own skin,” the USC quarterback said.
Such declarations have been a Rorschach test for a segment of the Bears’ fan base eager to poke holes in Williams’ prospect status — on the field, no one in this draft has fewer — or to stick up for the since-departed Justin Fields. Nonetheless, there’s no questioning Williams’ comfort level as an iconoclast. He was the first quarterback to skip medical testing at the NFL Scouting Combine. He doesn’t have an agent. So sure was Williams of his status as the draft’s No. 1 overall pick that he visited one NFL facility — Halas Hall — during the pre-draft process.
He was proven right. The Bears will draft him No. 1 overall Thursday.
Williams was college football’s first Name, Image and Likeness millionaire. He does Dr Pepper commercials and flies to Formula 1 races. Denzel Washington takes him to dinner to give him advice about handling celebrity. When Steak 48 in Beverly Hills wouldn’t let Williams in — he’d recently cut his hair and was wearing a sweatsuit — Washington walked up to the maître d and turned into his furious character from “Training Day.”
“’Movie Denzel,’” Williams said. “He goes off on the guy and he goes back to regular Denzel. He’s giving me wisdom.”
When Williams walks across the stage Thursday night — silver pinkie and all —he will be unlike any quarterback to ever put on a Bears jersey. Given the franchise’s woeful history at the position, that’s a good thing.
“He handles the criticism and the media that’s thrown at him very well, honestly,” Washington receiver Rome Odunze said. “He continues to be his own person, which is very commendable. On top of that, he’s a tremendous football player.”
He’s clearly the top choice in this year’s draft. The Bears confirmed as much this offseason.
After general manager Ryan Poles first met Williams at the NFL Scouting Combine, he traded Fields and led a contingent of coaches and executives to USC’s pro day in March. When Williams came to Halas Hall earlier this month, the Bears sent him to dinner with their veteran players.
“I’m just one of them — nothing more, nothing less,” Williams said. “Same person every day. What they saw at the dinner is the person that I am five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now.
“Hopefully with a couple more accolades on that list.”
The Bears — whose greatest quarterback, Sid Luckman, retired 74 years ago — would happily take that. They’ve already spent the offseason building support for the USC star, trading for receiver Keenan Allen, signing running back D’Andre Swift and hiring offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, whom Williams praised for helping revive Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith’s career.
“You have a lot to work with where you could potentially have a superstar player …” NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah said of Williams. “I think he’s extremely gifted. Does he have the upside, the potential, of being a top- five to -10 quarterback? He does.”
Williams fielded increasingly ridiculous questioning Wednesday, from what player he’d like to trade closets with (Odell Beckham Jr.) to his expected Madden rating (81) to the first NFL jerseys he’d owned (Troy Polamalu, followed by Barry Sanders and Walter Payton). He smiled and refused to say which number he’ll wear for the Bears, not wanting to jinx anything. Unofficially, he became the first draft prospect ever asked why didn’t sign his SAG card.
The Bears say they’re not worried about what Poles calls “the whole Hollywood thing” moving forward. Williams said he knows “who I am, how hard I work, what I do in my daily life, how I act, how I treat people with respect.”
The Bears believe Williams puts football first, something the quarterback reiterated at his pro day and at the NFL’s charity event Wednesday. He bemoaned the fact that he hasn’t been a part of a team since USC lost their regular season finale Nov. 18.
“That’s probably the toughest part to me, and something I really want to get back to,” he said Wednesday. “In the locker room, to be around the guys.”
Thursday, he gets his team.
In fact, he’ll be the face of it.
When Williams gets handed the navy jersey to match his suit Thursday night, he’ll inherit one of the most difficult tasks across American sports — to be a transcendent quarterback for a founding franchise that’s never had one.
The Bears’ quarterback history is so star-crossed that the McCaskey children grew up teasing their father Ed for calling heads when NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle flipped a silver dollar in a hotel ballroom prior to Super Bowl IV. Tails handed the Steelers the No. 1 overall draft pick — and quarterback Terry Bradshaw, who won four Super Bowls on the way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The Bears never recovered.
“If you get too locked into the past, it can hold you back,” chairman George McCaskey told the Sun-Times last month. “That applies to success in the past or struggles in the past. This is a completely different situation. I think the important thing is to make the most of the opportunity.”
History always hovers at Halas Hall like mist, though.
Fifty-four years after the Bradshaw coin flip — and one year after Poles traded the No. 1 overall pick, and a chance to draft a passer, to the Panthers — the Bears are ready for their first-ever top pick at quarterback.
Williams is too.
“Chicago, if that’s the place for me [Thursday], I can’t wait,” he said. “All I’ve heard is great things about you all, and I’m ready to go.”