If anyone can play it cool about the possibility of landing a contract worth a quarter of a billion dollars, it’s Bears quarterback Caleb Williams. But no matter how focused he is on the immediate, there’s no ignoring what potentially awaits him if he takes another step forward this season.
He shrugged when asked about it Tuesday. Money doesn’t drive him, he said, though he’s never made money quite like this. And not only would it be a stunning financial windfall, but it would give him and the team long-term stability.
He’s made quite a bit of money already, including an estimated $10 million in N.I.L. deals in college, his current four-year, $39.5 million rookie contract and various investments. Even as Williams indulged the conversation, he didn’t get dollar signs in his eyes.
“Money’s not a motivating factor for me in that sense,” he said. “If I wanted to be done today, I’d be fine. If I wanted to be done and go somewhere and disappear for a long time and never come back and y’all would never see me again, I’d be OK. That’s not my motivation.
“Winning, winning, winning handles everything… so that’s where my mind’s at.”
Williams is entering the always-pivotal third season for a quarterback, when teams typically gain certainty of what they have. His predecessors, Justin Fields and Mitch Trubisky, were lost causes by then and soon were out of the building. Business as usual for the Bears.
That’s the part that really speaks to Williams. He never talked about money leading up to the Bears drafting him. He did, though, say he wanted to “create history and rewrite history.” Being the long-awaited answer at quarterback is priceless.
“I obviously want to be here forever,” Williams said. “That’s a goal of mine: to be at one place until I’m done, until I decide that it’s over for me and I want to go home and ride off into the sun… I’ll be here.”
A five-year extension, common for quarterbacks at his stage, likely would eliminate the Bears’ fifth-year option for him — their deadline to trigger it is in May — and run through the 2032 season.
The last time the Bears gave a long-term extension to a quarterback they drafted was more than three decades ago with Jim Harbaugh. But ever since they had the top pick of the 2024 draft in hand, there’s been hope that Williams could be the guy.
He’ll need to do more to prove that. He set the franchise record for yards passing last season, helped the Bears win their first playoff game in 15 years and delivered jaw-dropping highlights. He also was last in the NFL in completion percentage — he finished at 58.1, well below coach Ben Johnson’s standard of 70% — and 22nd in passer rating.
If he rounds out his game, the market for his new deal likely would be at least $250 million over five years. Fourteen NFL quarterbacks are on contracts paying at least $44 million per season, and those prices go up every year as the salary cap grows.
If he wants that much, that is. Williams, who doesn’t have an agent, implied that his priority will be to ensure that his contract doesn’t prevent the Bears from building a championship-caliber roster.
“The most important thing is being able to make sure when I do get my contract that we can keep winning, that we can keep progressing as a team,” he said. “That’s my biggest goal when those moments do come up, when that time does come up, is how can this help us and propel us?
“Yes, it’s going to help me, but how can it keep us steady and be able to keep winning games, because that’s most important to me.”
Maybe that shrug about money was genuine.
Everyone in the organization seems to believe he’s headed toward a breakout season, which would all but clinch the contract extension, and general manager Ryan Poles and his staff have been factoring it into their salary-cap plans for future seasons.
Poles and Johnson will be the ones deciding on that commitment, and both sound like they’re already leaning that way. Poles said Tuesday he loves where Williams is at in his development, and Johnson raved about everything from his demeanor to his practice habits and grasp of the offense.
“He knows what he’s doing,” Johnson said. “He’s executing at a much higher clip than he ever has, and it’s going to continue to grow. He’s going to continue to elevate everyone around him, coaches included.”
Poles said in February the Bears were getting “closer and closer to clarity” on Williams’ trajectory, but cautioned that they need to see consistency and added, “He knows he’s got work to do.”
That work is well underway. Johnson has continued to pepper Williams about footwork and reading defenses. His decisions must be smarter and his passes more accurate. The checklist to be a franchise quarterback is long and the vetting is rigorous. Teams don’t give a quarter of a billion dollars to just anybody.
