Windy City Gridiron
Here we go again. Dammit, I said it.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I felt about this game last night because I’ll be honest, this one hit me in the family jewels.
It’s week one, overreactions from week one are silly and are constantly proven to be false. And when I tried to figure out exactly why I was so down, I realized, I didn’t even care that much that they lost.
So if that’s the case, what would it be?
It was Ben Johnson’s first start; there will be growing pains.
The offense looked disjointed, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that they aren’t clicking just yet with a new system.
There were far too many mistakes on special teams.
There were a few egregious calls against the Bears by the officials.
Even with those calls, there were still way too many penalties by the Bears.
They blew a lead in a very Flusian manner.
Jonah Jackson looked like the guy that the Rams benched last year, and couldn’t wait to get him out of town.
There were plenty of reasons to be down about the performance, but a lot of them were just week one, Ben Johnson’s first game, stuff that I wouldn’t usually worry about.
And I’m still not worried about any of that.
But it hit me: why does this one bother me so much? Simple. All the alarms are going off in my head about Caleb Williams.
Typing that makes my chest tight.
I pounded the table for Caleb Williams. I told fans they were wrong if they thought the team should keep Justin Fields. This was the path. This was the way. I knew it. I wanted others to follow in my line of thinking.
Ted “Theodore” Logan once summarized the philosophy of Socrates as “the only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.”
Apparently, that’s me.
Because when Ben Johnson arrived, Caleb and Ben? That would assuredly be an unstoppable duo. This had the potential to be the next great head coach/quarterback pairing.
So what happened?
When we look at Caleb’s performance, there were positives, no doubt. He showed some great ability with his legs. He made a couple of great throws, especially the ones like the completion to Rome Odunze at the sidelines. He didn’t turn the ball over. He avoided quite a few sacks.
Some issues come with learning a new system, his third in three years. Some issues come with working with a new coach (his fourth in three years). Those weren’t the issues that concerned me.
The issues that concerned me were what it looked like for Caleb Williams, the quarterback. And many of those issues are the types that plague bad NFL QBs. Those are the ones that QBs can’t overcome. Those are the ones that tell you when a quarterback isn’t the guy.
Let’s start with accuracy issues. Williams’ accuracy has been poor, dating back to last year. Williams’s accuracy on both...
