© Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
How Counting Out Caleb Williams and Bears Denies NFL Reality
The Bears and their potential new QB are the objects of denial by one Fox Sports commentator, who assumes everything stays the same from one year to the next.
The ability of Caleb Williams to come into the NFL and succeed in uplifting the Bears to the playoffs is being challenged, again.
This time it's by a dubious source, Joy Taylor of Speak on Fox Sports One. She attempted to shoot down the idea Williams and the Bears could do a turnaround effective enough to get themselves into the playoff in his rookie year.
She forgot the most basic NFL premise of all. NFL stands for Not For Long.
"So which team in the NFC is going to fall off so much that it's going to provide an opportunity for Caleb Williams to come in and win four more games as a rookie in a very tough division?" she demanded of a panel, as she sought to lower expectations for the USC QB, the presumed first pick of the draft to the Bears.
It would be so easy to point to one team, in particular, at this point even when this happens all the time but it's more fun to let her continue.
"Did all of these other teams walk off the face of the planet? Do they exist?" she asked.
It is the NFC North where she places the basis of her argument, although she initially said NFC teams.
"What we think of this division is not real, it is a very tough division," she said.
Yes, it is. Who thought it wasn't?
"The Packers beat the Cowboys down on the road in the playoffs, the Lions went to the NFC championship game," Taylor said. "These teams have momentum, they have experience, they have postseason wins. They have quarterbacks they have returning. They got better. They're in their (the Bears') division.
"So it's not about what I think Caleb Williams is capable of doing. It's about the fact that I just can't seem to forget that other teams are actually good and that they are in the divsion and that they recently accomplished great things."
Let the misinformed ramble and the truth eventually comes out.
"And I just can't dismiss what everyone else has been building to accommodate for one player that's going to a team that has no culture, that has no history of winning as of late, whose coach we do not know is a good head coach, to all of these new additions -- new additions by the way are all on paper, have not all played together," she said.
There it is. The Bears are losers. That's the basis of her argument.
Ladies and gentlemen: The 2023 Houston Texans, turned over 15 starting spots out of 24, which includes the nickel cornerback and second tight end. They had rookie C.J. Stroud who wasn't even the consensus No. 1 QB in the draft as Williams is. They were in a division won the previous year by a rising young team, theJacksonville Jaguars, also a division with the Tennesee Titans in it and they had been to the playoffs three straight years before the GM foolishly shipped out their top receiver. They still had Derrick Henry and coach Mike Vrabel, who still should be an NFL head coach.
And the Texans had tied the Bears for worst record in the league the previous year, with a new head coach who had only been a coordinator two years and was still in his 30s, and had an all-new staff.
It's called the NFL. Not for Long. It's on Sundays in the fall. The only advice she needs is to watch it. Unless it's on Peacock in the playoffs or Amazon Prime's network in regular season, it's probably a part of your regular cable package .
CBS Sports is projecting as many as six new playoff teams this year. It changes year to year in the NFL. It would be easy to come up numerous reasons for each 2023 NFC playoff team failing to make the postseason this year, and the one common to all of them would be injuries. You never can predict this.
They're not playing the 2023 schedule over again with the 2023 players like it was a computer game. It's an entirely different season. Things happen. Last year's darling of destiny is this year's underachieving disappointment. It's what can be expected when there is a competitive balance as close as there is in the NFL.
Of course, it's not going to be easy with a rookie quarterback but the part Taylor missed because she seems to have bought a long-imagined narrative is the Bears are losers and just sitting there themselves like rocks. While she was busy watching the Lions and Packers, she should have paid attention to a team with a defense that totally dominated the Lions twice and should have won their first game in addition to winning the second. This isn't fantasy. Go watch the two Detroit games over again. They were beat. The Bears also had another playoff team beat and lost it in the final minutes when they fell against Cleveland.
The Packers are always a Bears problem, it's true. But they'll be going into the season with a great uncertainty as a new defensive coordinator takes over who hasn't been an NFL coordinator but did have the 68th and 70th ranked defenses with Boston College before improving to 13th in 2023. The Packers also turned over their running backs besides making several defensive changes.
The Packers were late chargers last year, much like the Lions the previous year. Perhaps it's the Lions taking a step back this time after the disappointment of missing the Super Bowl.
The Bears were also late chargers and just started in a deeper hole than the Packerslast year. It was an 0-for-14 hole going back to 2022. When they finally emerged they won five out of eight, should have won seven out of eight and none of this happened with Williams or Keenan Allen or anyone else they've added.
It doesn't mean they'll make the playoffs, but to outright dismiss their chances becaue they'll have the top quarterback in the draft added to a team playing at a playoff level when last year ended is presumption gone astray.
There have been 15 rookies who led teams to the playoffs and not all of them had rosters as good as the one the Bears will have when they did it.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
