This is what living the dream of playing quarterback in the NFL is supposed to feel like.
Caleb Williams led the Bears to their biggest win over the archrival Packers in years with a 46-yard touchdown pass in overtime, casually stuffing his hands in his hand warmer as he watched it sail to DJ Moore. He showed up the next day for a food drive in the city wearing a foam cheese grater hat. He gave his uniform from the game to Lyrical Lemonade’s Cole Bennett with the inscription, “[Expletive] Green Bay.”
He was back on the practice field Tuesday afternoon, followed by what has become a regular cat-and-mouse routine with equipment manager Tony Medlin because Williams messes with him by not turning in his jersey promptly.
With Williams continuing to show high potential and the Bears heading to the playoffs, it couldn’t be more different than this time last year. He’s having a blast.
“The most joy comes from coming into that locker room and seeing everybody smile,” Williams said. “When you walk into the locker room, everybody’s happy, everybody’s cheering, everybody’s dancing. For all the hard work that we put in, that I put in, the sacrifice that we make to be able to have those moments, that’s joy.”
Williams said he had fun last season, too, but it obviously wasn’t like this. His development was stunted by a shaky offensive line and poor coaching, and the Bears were on a 10-game losing streak. Now they’re closing in on an NFC North title as they visit the 49ers on Sunday.
A lot of the credit for that turnaround goes to new coach Ben Johnson, whom Williams recently proclaimed, “The best coach in the world,” and the longer they’ve worked together, the more their competitive drive has brought them together.
But it didn’t start off that way. Not at all.
“At certain parts it felt like our relationship was pretty fragile,” Williams said, mispronouncing that last word “frah-gee-lay” with a big smile quoting a line from the movie “A Christmas Story.”
Neither coach nor player knew what to expect from the other when they met in January.
Johnson saw tremendous talent in Williams dating back to college and undoubtedly winced at how the Bears mis-coached him. He said Tuesday, though, he had no idea from afar what kind of worker he was, how sharp his mental game was and whether he’d be coachable.
Williams knew Johnson by reputation and spoke highly of him even before the Bears hired him, but it took a while to get a handle on him. Johnson’s intensity can easily be misinterpreted — “He can get mad and then start smiling at the same time, and it’s kind of creepy because you don’t know if he’s serious or joking,” wide receiver DJ Moore said over the summer — and Williams certainly hadn’t been coached that hard as a rookie.
“It was like, ‘Gee, this dude doesn’t seem like he likes me,’” Williams said. “But you start figuring out that that’s just him and… he cares so much about winning.
“And then when you get off the field, he’s one of the guys. He’s a player’s coach. He laughs and jokes with us. He’s bumping us around, so it’s fun, it’s enjoyable when we’re off the field. It’s fun and enjoyable when we’re on the field, but it did take a little bit.”
It hasn’t all been smooth, and Williams acknowledged in training camp they had their share of conflict, but those arguments were opportunities. Rather than bristle at Johnson’s correction, which was relentless and emphatic, Williams grew from it.
That’s what he “craved” as a rookie and didn’t get from coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron. He wanted a teacher with expertise and high standards. He wanted a harsh grader because he grades himself harshly.
He got all of that.
“That’s kind of how I’ve grown up, [with] hard coaching,” Williams said. “I’ve played my best ball with a coach like that.”
It also helps, he added, that, “When you get out there on the football field, he tends to call the right play at the right time.”
There has been an adjustment on Johnson’s end, too.
While he was drawn to the chance to build a young quarterback from the ground up, he’d never done that before. He had Jared Goff at quarterback during his three seasons as Lions offensive coordinator, and Goff was in his late 20s, had already made a Pro Bowl and a Super Bowl and had received four years of expert coaching from Sean McVay.
Williams didn’t have nearly that mental library after one season in the league, let alone the relationship equity that Johnson had with Goff. They’re getting there.
“We both have the same goals,” Johnson said. “He understands that now, and you only get to that by spending a lot of time together. Every single day, we’re spending one-on-one time together to where we can be very transparent with each other.
“What I’ve grown to love about him — I hope he would echo the same thing — is we’re mentally very similar. We share a lot of the same competitive drive and we think very much the same way in a lot of regards.”
That’s good. The Bears hope it gets even better.
Everything still hasn’t clicked in its entirety between the two, and Williams said recently that it’ll take more than one season to mesh with Johnson to the point at which “we’re basically saying the exact same thing” in every facet of the offense. But the most encouraging part of their first year together is that both of them see it heading that direction.
