Unveiling Carl Williams: The Nonconformist Quarterback Set to Redefine Tradition

The franchise has a long history of being written off as outdated. But a star who cheerfully defies preconceived notions about athletes will be drafted.

TFD – Meet Carl Williams, the nonconformist quarterback poised to challenge traditional football norms. Delve into his journey of redefining the game with a unique blend of talent, style, and confidence. Get ready to witness a new era in football with Williams leading the charge.

Among the NFL’s heirloom franchises, the Chicago Bears are the still living in the last century – the pride of George “Papa Bear” Halas, a league founding father. From their neoclassical stadium to their 101-year-old owner-matriarch to their stubborn reverence for “Bear Weather” (ie: lake-effect winter conditions that only affect the other team), everything about the franchise is old-fashioned. Even the Bears being in position to select a quarterback with the first pick in this month’s draft has arrived about 30 years too late in a league where the passing game dominates. What’s notable is that the passer in their sights isn’t the second-coming of 1940s hero Sid Luckman or a Harvard man or some other statuesque golden boy. It’s Caleb Williams, Gen Z’s poster boy quarterback.

On paper, Williams would appear to possess precisely the resume that Virginia McCaskey, the owner-matriarch in question, might describe as “the cat’s pajamas.” He went to USC – a college football program that Chicagoland’s many Notre Dame fans at least respect. He won the Heisman trophy, putting him in a league with early Bears two-way star Johnny Lujack. And Williams played most of his college games in the LA Memorial Coliseum, one of the few stadiums left that can rival Soldier Field’s antiquity – so he shouldn’t be a snob about the patchy quality of the Bears natural home turf.

Thing is, paper is a relic of the analog world, the world the Bears lorded over once, when they won eight championships before the Super Bowl era. Williams, on the other hand, is a product of our perpetually online age. He wasn’t even born when Tom Brady was drafted, and he marches to the beat of his own drum. The 22-year-old psyches himself up for games by listening to the very un-Zoomer John Legend’s Ordinary People, which is … a choice. He pushes the fashion envelope, infamously posing for GQ in a red dress with white gym socks and sneakers. That didn’t sit well with old-school football fans. “I’m not taking him with my no1 pick,” one Barstool sports commentator posted on TikTok. “I’m not even gonna explain it. I’m trading the pick.”

When Williams showed up to a USC women’s basketball game this month with fingernails painted to match his pink iPhone and wallet, keyboard warriors lost their minds once more. Some inevitably interpreted this as evidence that Williams might be gay and, thus, unworthy to be the face of an NFL club. (Never mind that Williams already has a girlfriend; also, Carl Nassib shown the lack of interest in the sexual orientation of professional football players.) In support of Williams, NFL Network’s Kyle Brandt stated, “The most important qualities in a leader are being confident, being secure with yourself, being bold, and having everyone you’re leading want to follow you.”

Williams frequently paints his fingernails for a little extra flair, sometimes with subliminal messages directed at his rivals, like many contemporary embodiments of macho. Less subdued, though, and destined to live in ignominy after Williams left USC without ever defeating the Utes, was FUCK UTAH, which he composed for a 2022 game versus the Utes. In contrast, it makes the commissioner-taunting headbands of Bears icon Jim McMahon seem archaic.

Williams isn’t just irreverent. He’s irrepressible, taking to social media to dunk on writers who have the temerity to suggest he “has never experienced adversity” – which is their way of suggesting he plays against the Black athlete stereotype. Williams was also among the first college football stars to take advantage of the transfer portal, moving to USC from Oklahoma expressly to continue developing under coach Lincoln Riley and also prime himself for the pro game under QB whisperer Kliff Kingsbury, the former Arizona Cardinals head man now running the Washington Commanders offense. Until a few months ago, the speculation was that Williams was tying his fate to Kingsbury and DC – his hometown franchise who will pick second in this year’s draft – was a more likely landing spot than Chicago, where he allegedly had no interest in playing.

Bears supporters’ devotion to quarterback Justin Fields, whom the organization selected with the 11th overall choice just three years prior, was strengthened by all of this. 62,000 spectators at Chicago’s Soldier Field yelled “We want Fields” during the Bears’ 37-17 victory over Atlanta on New Year’s Eve. “In Justin We Trustin'” campaign signs lined the route leading to the Bears’ suburban practice site. But in March, Chicago shipped Fields to Pittsburgh, essentially clearing space to bring in Williams – who even makes Fields, your typical young footballer with a point to prove, look like an old curmudgeon.

Williams could have turned pro at the end of his Heisman season in 2022, but opted to remain in school to avoid being picked first by Carolina – the Clampetts to the Astor-like Bears. (And given the mess the team turned into last season, who wouldn’t say it wasn’t the right call?) He was slammed for the decision, taken on the advice of father, Carl – who, among other things, has been quick to point out that his son, already college sports’ top NIL earner, will be motivated by more than just money. In fact, rumors last July that Carl had asked prospective agents if they’d feel comfortable negotiating with NFL teams for ownership stakes were all but confirmed when league owners voted to prohibit “non-family employees” from taking equity in teams. “He’d almost be better off not being drafted than being drafted first,” Carl told GQ in February. “The system is completely backwards.”

Since then, league insiders have written Carl off as a negative influence, which is understandable considering that the NFL draft is essentially a campy television program about Black fatherlessness. And for far too many couch potatoes, his Zoomer son is destined to be as out of place on the Bears as a ninety-inch plasma screen in a Victorian drawing room (above the fireplace, where the Rembrandt used to hang out). Some even worry that Williams might end up being as much of a bust as Todd Marinovich, the USC lab project.

If Williams is being too picky, it’s because there isn’t much about his real skill to find fault with. Throughout his time in college, he was frequently hailed as the next Patrick Mahomes, someone who could execute plays exactly as written and improvise when necessary. Williams, like Mahomes, is capable of making every pass you can imagine as well as a good number of ones you can’t, or what one scout refers to as the “holy shit” throws. Pro talent evaluators have begun drawing comparisons between him and Aaron Rodgers as the draft approaches. Rodgers is another quarterback with a reputation for, well, doing things differently, and the Bears have eerie familiarity with him.

A decade ago, the Bears would have been the last team to utilize a top pick on a generational passer, much less one with Black and Native American ancestry, as their team was still centered around bellcow runners, hero linebackers, and other Monsters of the Midway. (A few Bears supporters are old enough to recall the narrow margins of support that Black stars like Vince Evans and Kordell Stewart received from the team’s broader fan base.)

But while football fans outside Chicago weren’t looking, the Bears did something many never thought possible: they evolved. They stopped letting family members run the franchise or get taken in by the hot young GM prospect and turned the reins over to Chiefs front-office grinder Ryan Poles – who, incidentally, is also Black. (Egads, what would Papa Bear think!) Poles has been given unprecedented authority to move the team on from Fields and other popular players and rebuild around new faces like Williams and Keenan Allen, a sure-handed receiver who arrived via a trade with the Los Angeles Chargers last month. It’s almost as if Poles knows what he’s looking for in a championship team, something Bears fans haven’t experienced since Mike Ditka and Buddy Ryan were both carried off the field after a near flawless 1985 season.

What’s most reassuring is that Williams doesn’t merely want to be in Chicago, despite what some have been saying; he hasn’t held back while laughing at the ridiculous costumes that fans have been speculating about him wearing on draft day. “Wait til; yall see draft day suit and my ladies dress,” he wrote in response to one outfit guess, the geisha-evoking cover image from Young Thug’s 2016 mixtape.

Perhaps the world isn’t prepared for such a brilliant quarterback who is so incredibly self-possessed. But adhering to tradition has only gotten the league’s most reclusive franchise so far. Williams, at the very least, shows them the way toward what appears to be the nearest future.