Bears quarterback Caleb Williams has never climbed a mountain.
He’s about to.
“I wouldn’t say that climbing mountains is intimidating,” he told the Sun-Times in a sitdown interview, “but when you look up, you know you’ve got a long way to go.”
Here’s how steep it is for the No. 1 overall pick — the Bears have won one playoff game since Williams turned 6. Since the rookie was born on Nov. 18, 2001, the Bears have gone 23 games under .500 in the regular season.
At his position, they’ve been even worse. The Bears drafted Mitch Trubisky second in 2017 and Justin Fields 11th in 2021 — and finished dead last in the NFL in passing yards from 2017-23.
The best passing season the Bears have posted since Williams’ birth came in 2014, when Jay Cutler threw for 3,812 yards. That ranks 238th among all NFL quarterback seasons during that timeframe. In Williams’ lifetime, there have been 186 examples of NFL quarterbacks throwing for 4,000 yards in a season. None of them are Bears.
Before the Bears drafted Williams first overall in April, he had just a passing sense of their history. He didn’t focus too much on it, he said, because the past wasn’t anything he could change. But he learned a sliver of context about what he was stepping into.
“Throughout my years of growing up — I’m only 22 right now — the Bears haven’t necessarily been in position, or in that many positions, at least … to win the big one,” he said. “Or to win the big ones.”
That’s the mountain that Williams is eyeballing starting with Sunday’s season opener against the Titans. It’s made of the 50 starting quarterbacks the Bears have used since winning the Super Bowl in the 1985 season — and the losing record they have since.
“Before you climb the mountain you set a standard for yourself mentally,” Williams said. “When you get to the point where you feel like you’re going to plateau or you get to the point where you can rest, you rest in bye weeks. And then you look back up the mountain and you’ve got the rest of that stretch of the season to go.
“You know that that stretch is probably going to be the hardest part … You don’t have much oxygen, you don’t have all these other things, but you do understand that you set the standard for yourself mentally. And for the team.”
Williams’ first season will be the longest of his career — “The rookie wall is so real,” tight end Cole Kmet said — and the world will be watching.
It did when he was the consensus top-rated quarterback recruit in the country while at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C.; when he became the first true freshman starting passer at Oklahoma in 31 years; and when he won the Heisman Trophy at USC.
Thirteen months ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers made 40,000 Caleb Williams bobbleheads and handed them out with the quarterback in attendance. They’d reserved previous honors for Elton John and Kobe Bryant.
“’l’ll be honest,” Williams said with a smile. “It’s sick.”
It wasn’t the first, or last, moment that makes Williams pinch himself. In fact, he’s learned to give himself 24 hours to revel in them — just like football coaches preach to their teams after a win.
“If you do right, you win games — I do my job, we win games here — I think those [experiences] are gonna keep growing over time. …” he said. “It’s not something that you’re necessarily thinking of or trying to aspire to go get or have moments like those. You aspire to go win games and win championships.”
All the attention surrounding Williams — and the quarterback being unafraid to embrace it — led Bears players to wonder what he’d be like when he first got to Halas Hall. They knew he’d be confident — “He’s always been the guy,” receiver Keenan Allen said — but were pleasantly surprised when they found him to be a team-first football junkie.
“Generational hype,” receiver Tyler Scott said. “I just love the fact that he walked in, put his head down and worked. … Not all, ‘I’m him.’ He’s the complete opposite. Just kinda humbled himself.”
He clung to veterans. He listened before he spoke up. He knew the importance of small gestures, like not trying to take No. 13, his USC number, when Allen had worn it for 11 seasons.
“The football — all that’s great,” Scott said. “But the fact you’ve got a great person, a great human being … that can have a great work ethic. It just adds even more to who he is.”
When it was time to learn the playbook, Williams picked Allen’s brain over rounds of Monopoly Deal in a team hotel. When the Bears wanted him to focus on voice inflection at the line of scrimmage, he stayed late and screamed out audibles over and over again.
“It matters to the football team,” guard Teven Jenkins said. “It matters to him.”
Two things made the Bears the most excited to add Williams, general manager Ryan Poles said — the quarterback’s passion for the game and willingness to work at it.
“It’s always nice to see the work ethic match the desire to be great,” Poles said.
Williams has known hard work from an early age. Starting at age 9, and continuing for five years, he’d wake up at 4 a.m., eat the same meal — eggs with ham, an Ensure shake and vitamins — and go work out before school began.
“I was crying some mornings,” he said.
His dad Carl would “encourage me … push me,” Williams said, reminding him of what goals his son had set.
“It’s helped me with the years — the long years, the long weeks,” Williams said. “There are [times] when you do it for so long and then there’s one day when you don’t want to get up. But you get up.”
That ethos has followed Williams from grade school to Gonzaga, from USC’s Heritage Hall to Halas Hall.
“There’s been many people that can throw the ball maybe farther than me, a little bit harder, maybe a little bit more accurate,” he said. “For me to be able to be the quarterback of the Chicago Bears — of the new era of the Chicago Bears — I don’t know how I can’t be appreciative … It’s a special moment for myself and my family and for the Chicago Bears …
“It’s just that you’ve got to come in here and do the work.”
Williams’ first major step comes Sunday. He’ll spin his body while running out of the Soldier Field tunnel to see all four corners of the stands, take it all in, and get to work.
The mountain awaits.
“We’re at base camp … ” Williams said. “We’re packing up all our stuff. We’re ready to go on the climb.”