January 18, 2024
You saw the video of Caleb Williams crying on his mom’s shoulder after they lost their game to Washington, all but ensuring they were bounced from the national championship picture. The reaction was mixed. Some folks thought it was natural for a young man to cry when something he wanted so badly was suddenly taken away from him. While others thought it looked weak and was immature.
The reason we bring that moment up is because it epitomizes the feedback that the Bears received behind closed doors about their potential draft pick later this year. The Bears, as you probably know, have the first overall pick in the draft. The projected overall #1 is none other than Caleb Williams. You can see a full list of the #1 player drafted in 2024 odds here.
This is where it gets interesting. Sports announcer Brock Huard was recently interviewed by Waddle & Silvy of ESPN1000. Huard insinuated that Williams really isn’t tough enough to play the kind of football that Chicago wants to play. “Bully ball”, as he called it, is what the Bears play and Justin Fields is better suited for it. The thing that makes this so interesting is that his brother Luke Huard is an assistant coach with USC. This means we are talking about insider info here. Apparently, Caleb’s toughness is questionable in their eyes.
This seems to fly in the face of what we have seen from Caleb Williams here at SBA. The guy took a pounding last year and kept coming back for more at USC. And Justin Fields has missed a lot of games with injuries playing this physical brand of football. Your days are numbered when you take a lot of hits in the NFL.
Still, the #1 player drafted is going to be Caleb Williams. The Bears may very well trade out of that spot and pick up some extra draft picks by doing so. In fact, that is exactly how they got this #1 pick to begin with. It came when they traded down with Carolina last year so that Carolina could draft Bryce Young. The Panthers rookie QB was so bad that his team finished dead last in the league. This qualified them to receive the #1 draft pick this year but woops, they traded it away last year. The circle is complete.
