CALEB’S BEAR CLAW IS GREAT ON AUG. 14, BUT QBS ARE WRETCHEDLY VULNERABLE
As Aaron Rodgers airs ancient drama with Olivia Munn, the Chargers are without Justin Herbert and the Vikings lose J.J. McCarthy, which brings even more pressure to the most bludgeoned role in sports
The videos are hysterical, including one lifted from a Buffalo preseason game and AI-ing him into the next Super Bowl. Then there’s the national chatter, which already has Caleb Williams among the NFL’s top six quarterbacks in second-reaction ability. Seems ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky ranked him just below Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson — and ahead of Dak Prescott and Justin Herbert.
Imagine Week 1 of the regular season, when Williams vaults over Mahomes with a flip pass from his right hip and is nominated, yep, for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“Being able to make a play is central to QB success, and the best in the league excel at making off-schedule and off-platform throws,” says Orlovsky, who once played the position, sort of. “These second-reaction passes from different arm angles — often on the move — can be the difference between moving the sticks and a stalled drive. They require serious creativity at times.”
And isn’t “Hard Knocks” embracing the raw romance between Chicago and lakefront warfare? Williams has thrust himself into the fury, trademarking a hand gesture called the Bear Claw, to the point Jeremy Allen White was asked by a fan to expand his fist at an autograph ceremony. The Bears meet “The Bear,” a nice time to be in a metropolis that hasn’t won a championship since 1985. The trees inside the Lake Forest practice facility never have looked so plush, even when the Max program starts 75 minutes late on Tuesday night. It couldn’t have been Caleb’s timing problem.
“This Bears QB is good,” declared a local columnist who saw him play 20 snaps and throw seven passes Saturday.
“It's the fruits of his labor,” coach Matt Eberflus said. “He's been working his tail off in practices and even before that, all through the summer. … There's certainly positivity there. We're not going to squash that. I do feel like we have a lot of work to do and a lot of things to accomplish as a football team, not just Caleb. We’ve all got to play good around him. It's important that we keep improving.”
Said Caleb, without a Bear Claw: “I wouldn’t say I was trying to show (confidence) and I wouldn’t say that it’s natural. I would say that it comes from the hard work here and us being here, working together, building this thing together as we go and also the years of work of getting here and now being a Chicago Bear. It just comes from a lot of hard work over time and being around these guys. They make it a lot easier for me.”
On the 14th of August, those are grand thoughts. Some are stupid. I am returning from the Olympic Games, and I’m not sure any of the American megaheroes — Simone Biles, Steph Curry, Katie Ledecky — faced more pressure than the cadre of 32 men who will start under center next month. In sport, no team is vulnerable to higher penalties than those losing first-string QBs, who make magnificent sums only to collapse into injured reserve. Ask Jim Harbaugh, whose life is crumbling far beyond Michigan as he considers Luis Perez or Easton Stick to replace Herbert, who struggles with a plantar fascia injury and might miss real time.
“Competitors are welcome,” said Harbaugh, dogged early despite wearing the lightning bolt of the Los Angeles Chargers.
Or ask the Minnesota Vikings, who have lost rookie J.J. McCarthy to a meniscus tear of his right knee. He would be connected to Harbaugh, as well, after they won a collegiate title in Ann Arbor. After surgery, McCarthy could return later this season or not until 2025. “That’s totally, totally a medical decision,” coach Kevin O'Connell said. “Certainly, what is best for the long-term health of J.J. will be the priority. I don't have that answer and really won't be part of determining that answer. I have total complete trust in our medical staff and also the people that will be performing the procedure.”
So, weeks away from the madness, the Vikings look buried in the mean NFC North while the Chargers face possible torment in the AFC. Year after year, quarterbacks deal with jeopardy every time they wear a uniform, take a snap and breathe. How would you like to be Brock Purdy, whose future as a massively paid star in San Francisco depends on how he performs this season? Or Tua Tagovailoa, who was paid $212.4 million with $167.1 million guaranteed — and can’t afford to suffer more injuries in Miami? Or Jalen Hurts, who had no fun on the Philadelphia sideline and needs to play better instead of sparring with coach Nick Sirianni? Or Allen, who needs to reach the Super Bowl before we start wondering if he needs a scenery change?
Or Aaron Rodgers, who decided to write a book and turn his family troubles into yet another public smirkathon. As he nears 41 and tries to recover from an Achilles tear, he doesn’t need anyone thinking about old insults between Olivia Munn and his parents. Foolishly, he brought them back in a biography written with Ian O’Connor. This is the worst time to hear about Rodgers’ in-house estrangement, caused in the winter of 2014 when the actress was dating him. That’s ancient history, and nothing the New York Jets want to hear about in “Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers.”
Remember when Munn didn’t want Ed and Darla to see their son play in Tampa Bay before Christmas? According to the book, Ed told her “The only thing I said was, ‘You haven’t been on the scene very long. You’re just his girlfriend. We’re his parents,’ ’’
Which prompted Aaron to write home. “Don’t attack the woman I love,” he said.
The parents didn’t talk to Rodgers for nine years. Since then, he has moved on to many other women — Danica Patrick, Shailene Woodley, Mallory Edens — and placed weirdo importance on ayahuasca highs in the offseason. Munn married comic John Mulaney and welcomed a son, and recently, she spoke about fighting cancer in both breasts. It makes zero sense to hurt so many others with published words.
But that’s Rodgers. “You get on his bad side, you cross him once, you are dead to him,” said a source quoted by O’Connor. At least he admits he was wrong about being immunized against COVID-19, which turned off some of his bigger supporters — “the crux of my appeal,” he said.
“If there's one thing I wish could have gone different, it's that, because that's the only thing (critics) could hit me with,” Rodgers said. “I had an immunization card from my holistic doctor, which looked similar. I wasn't trying to pawn it off as a vaccine card, but I said, ‘Listen, here's my protocol. Here's what you can follow to look this up.’ And it was an ongoing appeal. So, if I had just said (I was unvaccinated) in the moment, there's no chance that the appeal would have been handled the exact same way.”
Look, all anyone cares about in 2024 is whether he can move around on a weak heel and lead the Jets to the playoffs. Otherwise, he can retire. Until then, we have to hear his parents discuss Munn.
“She just made stuff up to make herself look good,” Ed said. “She said the family was dysfunctional before she met Aaron, which is bull. We were going to all of his games; we were staying at his house. We had a great relationship. Nothing bad was going on.”
Said Darla: “I can think about showbiz families that, like the Kardashians, climb all over each other for fame and stuff like that. But that’s not our family. Nobody did that.”
So Rodgers has another pox on his accountability, thanks to his foolishness about making even more money and winning more attention. By comparison, Bears fans can survey Williams this month with “shock and awe” and ask if his greatness is Mahomes-like. Or, as Chicago is accustomed with sports teams, a hope murderer. Nick Saban, in the media now, stopped in to see Eberflus, one of his former players.
“To me, expectations are a killer," Saban said. “This kid you got — this kid’s got so much media, so much hype, so much expectation on doing well. And he has to develop so quickly to meet the expectations that everybody has for him, it’s almost impossible. The expectations are a killer, but yet — to use your word — development is the key for him. Peyton Manning threw 28 interceptions when he was a rookie. It’s the most in the history of all. But it didn’t affect him, just like the scoreboard. Scoreboard don’t mean anything until the game’s over.”
He knows. The Cincinnati Bengals arrive for a joint practice Thursday at Halas Hall, where important eyeballs will determine if he and Joe Burrow stay healthy. If not?
Tyson Bagent and Jake Browning are the quarterbacks.
And “Hard Knocks” crashes, as do Bear Claws.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.