Bear Digest

Where Caleb Williams plans to take his game and the Bears next season

The Bears QB emerged from a season-ending loss and exit interviews Monday at Halas Hall with the attitude of someone who wants even more success.
Gene Chamberlain|
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams emerges with the ball and a first down after a quarterback sneak late in Sunday night's loss.
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams emerges with the ball and a first down after a quarterback sneak late in Sunday night's loss. | David Banks-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

LAKE FOREST — Success and ultimately failure merely succeeded in whetting Caleb Williams' taste for more success.

On the day Bears players cleaned out their lockers, Williams spoke of the future in a much different tone than many players did after Sunday night's 20-17 overtime playoff loss to the Rams. He also continued playing increasing levels of leadership by not hanging out error-prone receivers to dry as he looked toward return playoff trips.

“You get into these games, you win a bunch of games, you get into these playoff games and you're winning," Williams said. "You play these good teams and you see what you have to go against. You see what championship level is, you see what you need to do to be at the position that you want to be at the end of the year. You see what you have to do, you figure it out.

"When you get knocked down, you get back up and that's what we're going to do. That's my mindset. We never stay down as a team."

Optimistic look forward

While many players after the game pointed out next year won't be the same team and the other teams in the division will be gunning for them, the Bears' gunslinger obviously plan to be even better than in 2025.

"I think we've shown that this year, we never stay down," Williams said. "We keep fighting. bringing that mentality into next year and then finding ways to bring that hunger for all four quarters in every single game is going to be important and something that we’ll focus on throughout the offseason and throughout next year.”

Williams owned the worst completion of any regular starting quarterback to make the playoffs since Andrew Luck in 2012 with a 58.1%, and in two playoff games completed just 52% of his throws. On Sunday, he had drops from Colston Loveland, Rome Odunze and Luther Burden but fought through it. He's already planning to improve his passing mechanics, which looked pretty good as he hoisted a miracle 45-yard throw for a 14-yard TD to Cole Kmet after backtracking 26 yards.

“Just every single rep, every single moment that I have in the offseason that I'm working out or practicing and getting those practice kind of game reps is where my mindset's going to be," Williams said. "And so, being able to be in the offense for a year, being able to be comfortable in the offense now,  being able to go back and look at things I could have done better. Was I too far forward? Was I too far back? Was I not consistent enough with my footwork and did I lean off and fall off the mound, is what we call it. Things like that.

"So, it's just super small things to be able to be more consistent for the guys, for the team, be able to keep the offense on the field as long as possible and be as efficient as possible. And so, that's something that I want to do for myself and this offense and this team.”

Already, Williams has that leadership role down that a good QB needs. Although Rome Odunze and DJ Moore were being thrown under the bus for blunders in the playoff loss, Williams was standing up and diverting blame.

The interception he threw to give the Rams a chance to win the game with the Bears threatening to go into game-ending field goal range was widely perceived as Moore's fault for not flattening out a "choice" route and running too deep.

The pick

"Like I said, it was just a miscommunication," Williams said. "Trying to just flatten him off on the safety. Since the other safety was down, I felt like we had enough space over there so I tried to flatten him off.

"It was just a miscommunication. His route is to go deep and attack that angle, which he did. We thought we were going to go under the safety at that point. It didn’t happen that way."

He hadn't talked to Moore about the play yet by Monday around noon.

"All this stuff this morning, everybody's been in different places with the exit meetings and all these different things," Williams said. "But definitely something that we'll discuss, but also we'll discuss with all the other wide receivers coming up in the future, next year."

The play involving route adjustments was a sort of gray area.

"Being able to just get on the same page in those moments, it's small things like that that show up in those moments that you may not have talked about, but being on the same page or talking about it, maybe Week 1 or Week 6, it shows up in Week 18, or whatever week we're in," Williams said. "And so, it's something to learn from for myself, a learning experience.”

Return engagement

In the end, it didn't happen for the Bears but their quarterback is determined to apply every bit of the learning experience he gained to get back to a meaningful spot in postseason. He has brought the city a taste of success and everyone wants more.

The moment at the end when numerous fans in the north end zone rose and applauded the efforts in a miracle season as they exited to the locker room afterward stuck with Williams.

"That was part of the reason why I said I can do it here, to bring life, to bring joy, to bring excitement, to being a Chicago Bears fan, to be able to cheer for us," Williams said.  "I do take pride in it. It's really cool, honestly, to be able to have those small things like that.

"Just being able to have the city behind you. You lose that game, you're walking out of the game and the fans stand up and cheer and roar in a tough moment. It goes a long way.”

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.