How will rookie QB Caleb Williams perform this year?
Live up to the “generational talent” label and lead Bears to playoffs
Play well but fall short of the highest expectations
Show some promising signs but mostly look raw
Play like a potential bust
Other
0voters
As for me, I’ve swallowed the navy-and-orange pill and expect to see the Bears take a huge leap this year.
The Bears have set Williams up with a great trio of WRs, plus a solid TE and RB, and the defense should be top half of the league. Williams has been called the best QB prospect since Andrew Luck, and Luck’s Colts won 11 games his rookie year. So that’s what I’m going with – 11 wins, 6 losses and a wild card berth.
Though I’m a Packer fan, I live in the Chicago area, and I’ve seen just how frustrated and downtrodden Bears fans – including my wife – have felt for the past decade or more, especially when their team plays Green Bay. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Packers were usually somewhere between “mediocre” and “terrible,” and I got so frustrated when they’d get thrashed week after week. So, I definitely understand the enthusiasm behind Williams, though I think, for some fans, it’s bordering on “irrational exuberance.”
Williams is likely to be a very good player, but even “generational talents” can struggle in making the transition to the NFL. Bear in mind that guys like Trevor Lawrence and Joe Burrow were also incredibly highly-touted coming out of college, and drew similar “one of the best ever” comparisons, and still had sometimes-rocky first seasons in the league.
I think that the Bears will be a much better team this year, but it may well take a season or two before they, and Williams, are able to reach the heights that a lot of fans are already projecting for them for 2024.
I think he’ll be above average, but certainly not a finished product right out of college. The defense will probably carry them most of the season, as usual, so he doesn’t really even need to do all that much. He primarily needs to not lose games.
Even all-time greats like Peyton, Elway, and Aikman stunk up the joint their first year, but it was still clear they were special.
While that absolutely has been a long-term trend for the Bears (good defense, middling offense), looking at last season’s stats, their defense was in the middle of the pack, as far as yards allowed, points allowed, yards per play, etc. Other than picking up Montez Sweat midway through last season (who played very well for them), their focus has largely been on improving the offense (which needed it), and I’m not sure just how far that defense can carry them.
Peyton, Elway, and Aikman were all drafted by terrible teams. Last year’s Bears weren’t great, but they still managed 7 wins with Justin Fields and Tyson Bagent at QB. Not saying Williams won’t have his “welcome to the NFL” moments, but he’s in a lot better position than other #1 picks.
I’m excited by a lot of the moves we’ve made, and I certainly expect us to be a better team this year. People forget we were 7-10 last year, so it’s not like we’re coming from the very bottom. But overall, I have several concerns.
Caleb is a rookie and he’s undersized. I have seen the tape and read a million scouting reports. I know that the intangibles are way off the charts, but when it comes down to it, I hate undersized QBs. Technically Mahomes is undersized, so perhaps my bias is dumb, but I can’t help but worry that Caleb is going to end up with an awful lot of deflected passes at key moments. He’s no Bryce Young, thank god, but it’s something to monitor. And he’s a rookie. While we’ve seen rookies have amazing first seasons as recently as last year, I’m tempering expectations. But if he has 2 or 3 incredible games in the first month or so, I’m certain that I will become a rabid supporter.
The O Line is still a question mark. Few teams feel great about their blockers at this point of the season, so maybe it’s not a huge issue. We’ve invested a fair bit of resources there and we definitely have some guys with potential, but between injuries and inexperience, the wheels could come off in a hurry. That said, if the moves pay off on the inside, we could take a big step forward. We just can’t have Caleb running for his life back there.
The WRs look incredible on paper, but other than DJ Moore, there’s some questions. Rome is a rookie. Scott is just a sophomore coming off a bad rookie year. Keenan Allen is close to the age where things start falling off. This is probably an overly pessimistic view but the praise we’ve gotten might have gone too far. We are also introducing a new OC which adds a further unknown.
The pass rush is shaky. It’s Sweat and then a bunch of nobodies. Last year’s draft picks were uninspiring and we didn’t really add any FAs. We drafted a project player opposite Sweat. I don’t think Sweat can carry us on his own. And if he gets hurt and misses time, holy shit.
I don’t care how great a college quarterback is. There is just no way he can walk onto the field as a raw rookie and be an Aaron Rodgers. NO … WAY. Yet, after decades of QB failure, that is what many of the Bear fan(atic)s actually expect. I hope they don’t turn on him when he goes through his inevitable growing pains.
This is my biggest concern, especially on the interior where we have the oft-injured Jenkins and two justaguys.
Did you completely miss C.J. Stroud’s rookie season last year? No, of course he wasn’t prime Aaron Rodgers, but he did play like an up-and-coming elite QB and led his team of nobodies to a playoff victory.
Russell Wilson also led the Seahawks into the playoffs as a rookie, with an 11-5 record, which followed 4 previous seasons where the team had losing records. (He’s my immediate example because I watched him do it.) Rookies can be stars right away. I did get a feeling that Stroud though is something pretty special.
Can a rookie walk onto the field and be Aaron Rodgers? Of course they can! I mean, if you’re talking about Aaron Rodgers when he was a rookie. Of course, Rodgers spent his first few years in the NFL as a backup to Favre. So you could say that we have a number of rookies who are better than Rodgers, if they are able to find immediate success.
If you mean a rookie isn’t going to peak his rookie year, I sure hope not! That would be pretty sad.
While that’s generally true for all QBs and especially rookies, Caleb could be an exception. His entire USC tape was him running for his life. The thing about him that gets everyone so excited is his ability to scramble, his preternatural movement in the pocket, and his improvisation on off schedule plays. If any rookie QB were to thrive behind a shaky OL, Caleb is probably him. That said…the biggest knock on him besides is height is how long he holds the ball. We don’t really know how much of that is cause and effect.
Well, that’s all I said so, in essence, you agree. Yes, he played very well, but we all know NFL means, “Not For Long”. Coaches will study him and adjust. Let’s see if he can deal with that. For example, Rick Meyer’s highest completion percentage and highest passing yardage was his first season. You would think maturity and experience would produce equal or greater numbers, but it never did.
" Meyer attended the University of Notre Dame from 1989–1992, accumulating a 29–7–1 record as starter – including 3 bowl games. He began his tenure serving as backup to Tony Rice, then took the reins of the Notre Dame offense in 1990 and led the team to the Orange Bowl."
The NFL was VERY high on Rick Meyer. In fact, he was the #2 pick in the first round of the 1993 draft. His first season stats, and the fact that he was a rookie, seemed to support great things to come. Never happened.
If you replaced “Caleb” with “Russell Wilson”, that whole paragraph could also be true. (Except the USC part.) Which is good and bad. Wilson had a pretty good decade, was great even as a rookie (breaking multiple NFL records) and had a good decade’s worth of play. Obviously that didn’t end well, but there’s potential there.
And yeah, Wilson had awful offensive lines too and still made things work most of the time.
While their body types are comparable, Wilson played in much better offenses in college and didn’t need to do nearly as much scrambling. Caleb might still look like Russ during his early time in Seattle once we see live action, but their scouting reports aren’t all that similar. Russ was a huge play action guy in college, not a throw it all over the yard guy like Caleb. On paper Mahomes is easily the closest stylistic comp, but of course you have to be careful with that.
