Troy Aikman won’t stop shading Bears QB Caleb Williams after broadcast criticism

If Caleb Williams, Ben Johnson, and the Chicago Bears have any prevailing thoughts about Troy Aikman’s less-than-complimentary take on Williams’s performance during Chicago’s Week 6 win over the Washington Commanders, they haven’t shared them in a while. Both Williams and Johnson addressed Aikman’s remarks in the game’s aftermath and then moved on because they had, you know, other stuff to do (like winning three of their next four games).

But Aikman apparently hasn’t gotten the situation fully out of his mind, as evidenced by a recent interview he did with Front Office Sports.

While touching on a question about his broadcasting style and his stance on criticizing players and coaches when necessary, the Hall-of-Fame quarterback and long-time color analyst brought up the Bears situation unprompted as an example.

“I never want to cross the line where I’m not respectful to the participants on the field because I do know how hard the position is,” Aikman said of his style. “And quite honestly, you didn’t ask this, but being in Chicago and with the Caleb [Williams] situation: when you do live television for 25 years, there’s bound to be times when you say something, and you’re like, ‘I wish I could take that back,’ or ‘I wish I could say, could have said that a little differently,’ or in the moment you say something, you’re like, ‘That didn’t quite come out right.’ That game was not one of those.”

“I walked out of that game feeling like ‘OK, it was a game that came down to the wire.’ It’s fun, whatever. On Tuesday evening, I had dinner and I got home and I was just kind of looking at my Instagram, and all of a sudden Ben Johnson comes up and it’s got Troy Aikman written on there. And I’m like, ‘What is this?’ First time I heard about it. So I don’t know exactly where that came from. I didn’t go back and watch the broadcast, but I would challenge anyone to go watch it and tell me that any analysis that I gave was unfair. I mean, they may disagree if I thought that was maybe not great ball placement, and they thought it was. OK, but I’m not sure where it came from.”

Perhaps it’s because the Bears game happened to be a high-profile instance he could point to that happened relatively recently. Or maybe he has hard feelings about the fact that the Bears themselves responded to it. Maybe he just doesn’t think much of Caleb Williams.

But for whatever reason, Aikman wants it known that he’s doubling down on his assessment of Williams and the Bears from that day. In fact, he’s daring people to contradict him about Williams’s tape from that game.

While one could certainly acknowledge the Commanders game wasn’t Williams’s sharpest performance, calling it “lucky” when Williams makes a chain-moving throw to D’Andre Swift only for Swift to break a tackle and take it the distance feels weird. Plus, Williams led a game-winning drive that the broadcaster had an opportunity to mention here as a way to flip the tone of his comments but, like Justin Fields eyeing a wide-open receiver heading for the end zone, turned it down.

Troy Aikman caught heat from the Bears for calling a Caleb Williams touchdown pass “lucky."@TroyAikman, who says it's his job to be honest, tells FOS:

"I would challenge anyone to go watch it and tell me that any analysis that I gave was unfair."
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) November 14, 2025

So, how are observers supposed to take that?

Ultimately, Aikman doesn’t care what people think about the situation, which is his right. Nothing he said was so out of line that it deserves a public apology, so the thing to do would be to quit talking about it and keep it pushing as the Bears are doing.

Bringing it back up in this manner feels petty and smug, but it also suggests the backlash to his remarks (and the Bears’ gentle trolling) is living rent-free in his head.

Oh, by the way, that quarterback he called “lucky” is leading a 6-3 football team and has a chance to put up the greatest statistical season for a quarterback in Bears history. Here’s hoping Aikman has to talk about that sometime this year.

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