Eberflus says No. 1 pick Williams will be the Bears’ starter
LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Caleb Williams is the Chicago Bears’ starting quarterback. Just in case there was a shred of doubt the No. 1 overall draft pick is the team’s No. 1 QB, coach Matt Eberflus erased it on Friday.
“No conversation. He’s the starter,” he said.
Eberflus’ comment was hardly a surprise considering the Bears have been all in on Williams since the early stages of the draft process. They made their intentions clear when they traded Justin Fields to Pittsburgh in March.
Chicago brought in veteran quarterbacks Mike Glennon and Andy Dalton when they drafted Mitchell Trubisky and Justin Fields with high picks in recent years, thinking the rookies would watch from the sideline in a sort of redshirt season. The plan blew up in both cases, with Glennon getting benched for poor play and Dalton getting hurt. But the Bears were under a different regime at the time, with former general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy.
The other quarterbacks currently on the Bears’ roster are Tyson Bagent and undrafted rookie Austin Reed.
Williams, the 2022 Heisman Trophy winner, is widely viewed as a generational talent. The Bears are banking on him to become the sort of franchise quarterback Chicago has craved for decades.
Williams seems to be embracing his new surroundings, whether he’s sitting courtside at a Chicago Sky preseason game, getting a rousing ovation at Wrigley Field or doing regular-guy stuff like shopping at Target.
“You want to find balance within all of this,” Williams said Friday. “That’s really important. And then the other part of it, just getting around. Going to Target, that was for all of the installs and all the small things that I needed. And I just thought it was a funny picture, the way I was walking. It’s all of it. All of it goes together to enjoy and find a good balance, but also, in a sense, get acclimated to the area of the land and things like that.”
Williams put up huge numbers in college, with 93 touchdown passes and 14 interceptions during three seasons at Oklahoma and Southern California. He followed coach Lincoln Riley from Norman, Okla., to Los Angeles and threw for 72 TDs and just 10 interceptions in two years with the Trojans.
The Bears have made just three playoff appearances since the 2006 team advanced to the Super Bowl. They are 10-24 in two seasons under general manager Ryan Poles and Eberflus. But they see themselves as a playoff contender after going from three wins in 2022 to finishing 7-10 last season.
Jayden Daniels feels his biggest challenge after being drafted second by the Washington Commanders to become their franchise quarterback is learning how to be a pro.
He learned an important lesson before throwing his first NFL pass.
Daniels, the 2023 Heisman Trophy winner, and former LSU teammate Malik Nabers, now a receiver with the division-rival New York Giants taken four picks later, said Friday they called off their $10,000 bet over who would be offensive rookie of the year.
“We were uneducated on the gambling policy in the NFL,” Daniels said after the first practice of the Commanders’ rookie minicamp.
Odds and ends
Nabers, the sixth pick in the draft last month, signed a four-year, $29.1 million deal Friday that includes an $18 million signing bonus. … Thursday, the Las Vegas Raiders signed first-round draft pick Brock Bowers, a tight end taken 13th overall from Georgia.