“Chicago is the place quarterbacks go to die” - Caleb Williams’ dad Carl reveals desperately searching for way out of Bears future
Caleb Williams is being posited as the future face of the Chicago Bears, but that was not necessarily the notion when he was still about to enter the league. In an excerpt from Seth Wickersham's upcoming book American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback, the 2024 No. 1 pick's father Carl recalled the family trying various ways to circumvent the draft and keep his son away from a franchise that has historically struggled to produce good quarterbacks.
"Chicago is the place (where) quarterbacks go to die," Carl was quoted as saying.
The excerpt also suggested that Carl had reservations about the collective bargaining agreement and "unconstitutional" rookie pay scale, which he posited could cost his son millions of dollars in market-value income. On this point, he apparently consulted with Archie Manning, who helped his son Eli force a trade out of San Diego two decades ago.
He even considered having his son join the then-nascent United Football League, which would make him an unrestricted free agent the following year and give him autonomy in choosing what team he wanted to play for.
At the Combine, Williams met Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell and was interested in playing under him. But both he and Carl knew that a trade to a divisional rival was highly unlikely, so they had only option left: "nuking" the Bears and the city of Chicago - just as John Elway did to Baltimore and the Colts in 1983 to successfully force a trade to Denver.
However, the perception changed after Williams visited the team's facility. He told Carl afterward that he could turn the franchise around:
"I can do it for this team. I'm going to go to the Bears."
Ben Johnson gets stern Caleb Williams warning ahead of first season as Bears HC
Caleb Williams failed to mesh with coach Matt Eberflus, who was fired after a Thanksgiving loss at the Detroit Lions, the first midseason dismissal of a head coach in franchise history.
The losses continued under caretaker Thomas Brown until they finally ended in the season finale against the Green Bay Packers. Since then, the team has initiated an overhaul: hiring Ben Johnson, trading for Pro Bowl guards Jonah Jackson and Joe Thuney, and drafting weapons Colston Loveland and Luther Burden III.
But Yahoo's Charles Schwab has a warning for Johnson and Williams:
"There is an entire Super Bowl era's worth of history working against Johnson and Williams. If the Bears can't get it right with Williams, the next quarterback prospect they eye in the draft might actually follow through on what Williams contemplated."
The team's OTAs begin on May 20 and will last until June 11.