THE IDENTITY HAS ARRIVED — CHICAGO, MEET CALEB — AND HERE COMES DANIELS
A brawny city never has featured a quarterback in a display of selfhood, but Sunday in London, Williams was so brilliant in throwing four more TD passes and scrambling madly that we ponder greatness
The city needs an identity beyond the Ditkas, who arrived in mustaches and sweater vests somewhere north of London. It continued to arrive Sunday in the elusive form of Caleb Williams, who wouldn’t stop laughing and screaming. He shook his body and swung a golf club to St. Andrews while faking here, throwing there, and locating Cole Kmet and Keenan Allen for touchdown passes when he wasn’t rollicking on another impromptu scramble.
If you mentioned it, you weren’t alone. “He played a little like Patrick Mahomes,” said Steve Mariucci, the NFL Network commentator and a former NFL head coach.
Can Chicago please let the Ditkas remain in the last century? Even the Obamas will be gone for three elections. Oprah, Bulls, Kanye, 1985 — why? This is 2024. The Bears have an exceptional quarterback at long last, as I’ve commented since they assumed the overall No. 1 pick in the draft. In the league’s latest excursion to Europe, Williams was allowed in Game 6 to flaunt the absurd skills he showed at USC, where he won the Heisman Trophy and was given his own Bobblehead Night at Dodger Stadium. He found another weak opponent in the Jacksonville Jaguars, who are ready to fire their coach.
Here was the magic and wizardry, finally, with a 4-2 record as he awaits a personal challenge in Washington on Oct. 27. Who is better, Williams or Jayden Daniels? For now, he was happy watching a sitdown tea-party celebration in the end zone. Ever see Mike Ditka do that?
He spent the afternoon throwing his arms to the sky, hugging everyone, flashing a persistent smile. He waved to the crowd at the end of a 35-16 blowout, when he threw four scoring passes and led the Bears to their first back-to-back performances of 35 or more points in 11 years. He sat on the bench like he owned it, accepting cheers from teammates who know so much more is coming. He won his third straight game, letting us ramble with his best quote of the season about winning.
“That’s the only thing that matters at the end of the day. If you look at anybody else or talk about anybody else or talk about any other sports, the only thing people mention is why Michael Jordan is the GOAT,” Williams said. “Because he wins.”
His reference works in Chicago. To become the current GOAT, let’s not rush matters. He must outplay Daniels and ascend to the level of Mahomes, who has won three Super Bowls when Williams says he wants eight to break Tom Brady’s record. He has dreams, and this year, he tries to plow through six games of a schedule in a demanding division. To his credit, Williams dwelled on an interception he threw when DJ Moore was open. How about the ball he threw that hit an offensive lineman in the helmet?
“I think obviously we have to keep getting better. I can’t turn the ball over. We’ve got to be better,” he said. “The progress we have is to keep growing. … We’ve got to keep going. There will be plays we don’t like, plays that we mess up on. We have to stay in constant communication, with the offensive coordinator. Keep a positive mindset.”
Wait, Williams was brilliant. Didn’t he kid about wanting all receivers to be involved at a 5G level, in Wi-Fi terminology? “Rest it at 5G, when we get everything going,” he said, not alluding to his 56 yards on four carries along with his 226 passing yards.
What about you? “I’ve been seeing it well,” he said. “It’s the comfort level of playing football. It’s about where I need to be, where my eyes need to be. Once the ball is snapped, you know what you have to do and be confidant about it. The consummate mindset to keep going and get momentum going.”
The local hero is Kmet — attending high school in Arlington Heights, where the Bears own land for a possible new stadium — so Williams could do nothing better for provincial hearts than make him a co-hero on the Tottenham Hotspur sod. He found him twice and had fun with his talents as an emergency long snapper, of which coach Matt Eberflus said: “First man in the history of ball to get two touchdowns and snap it right after. Maybe, I don’t know.” Let’s assume he was.
“Cole is unbelievable,” Williams said. “After he scored a touchdown, we celebrated him for snapping the ball. Those (extra) points go a long way. He did a great job.”
Said Kmet: “Definitely not a position I envisioned playing in the NFL — ever. It’s my biggest worry going into games.”
Remember, Chicago considers itself more local than global — Lemonheads, Garrett’s, Malnati’s, whatever Tom Skilling said on WGN — but welcome to the world of Caleb. He visited Paris at the Louis Vuitton Men’s Show and would like to introduce a Midwestern hub to the bigger world. Didn’t Jordan do it in Barcelona and Paris, where he referred to a famed museum known as the Louvre and called it “the luge” one day?
The debates will proceed for years about Daniels. He has been the hottest rookie QB and fired two touchdown passes for 269 yards before Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry dismantled a defense in Baltimore, for a 30-23 victory over the Commanders. That won’t stop the party, which included Jackson, who said, “I’ve been catching glimpses of him on social media and stuff like that. He’s going off. He’s doing what we saw in college — what got him the Heisman.” It reached a point where Daniels wanted a media slowdown. “I don’t like when people try to compare me to Lamar and vice versa,” said Daniels, who called himself a “little bro” when Jackson is a “big bro” in the league. “I’m a fan of his and how he plays the game, how he approaches the game. But we’re two different quarterbacks, two different styles. I appreciate what he’s done for the sport and what he’s done for the African-American quarterbacks.”
In Chicago, folks are thrilled Williams is better than Justin Fields, Mitch Trubisky and every other quarterback who has tried and failed. Anyone who thinks the Cubs and White Sox have follies — two World Series championships between them in more than 100 years — should consider the Bears’ longstanding rut. Sid Luckman, the only franchise player at the position, died in 1998. Can we conduct a seance?
“Always looking at the QBR. Man, it was good,” said Eberflus, referring to the QB ratings. “It was in the 120s again.”
“When he’s in a groove like that, and all the balls are catchable, it’s pretty easy to play receiver,” Allen said. “Week in, week out, he gets better.”
We’re simply happy, at present, that Roger Goodell can continue globalizing as he introduces an arriving superstar. We’d much prefer to watch Williams in Soldier Field, but painting “CHICAGO” and “BEARS” in the end zones of an English soccer palace also works. The commissioner might bring a Super Bowl to London with a plan to play 16 international games a year, featuring all 32 teams.
“We’ve always traditionally tried to play a Super Bowl in an NFL city — that was always sort of a reward for the cities that have NFL franchises. But things change,” he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that happens one day.”
Whether it’s in Tottenham or Wembley, or in Munich or Madrid or Dublin, or in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo in Brazil, Goodell keeps looking abroad as Donald Trump talks of World War III. The NFL remains a niche novelty — and always will — with soccer a world religion. But as long as Caleb Williams shows up and scores repeatedly and swings his golf club, people will watch a coronation.
And remember.
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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.