Caleb Williams’ bold draft night statement will come back to haunt the Bears

The Chicago Bears were on top of the world when they took Caleb Williams with the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft. Just a few months later, they may have hit rock bottom on Thursday Night Football against the Seattle Seahawks.

The Bears scored three points while Williams recorded seven sacks in a 6-3 loss. He is now just 10 sacks away from David Carr’s NFL record for sacks caught in a season.

It’s safe to assume that Williams didn’t expect 66 sacks to be in his future on draft night. We know for a fact that he didn’t expect the Bears to hit 76 times before the end of his rookie season. He also told his customer that.

“Hey, you’re not going to punt too much here,” Williams wrote to Tory Taylor after the Bears selected the punter in the fourth round of the draft.

Obviously Williams was very, very wrong about that and the internet won’t let him live it up.

While Williams leads the NFL with 66 sacks on the season, the Bears don’t lead the league in punting. At 79, that award still belongs to the Cleveland Browns.

Taylor hasn’t even matched his point total when punting for the Iowa Hawkeyes in the last four years. He led the nation in punts with 82 and 93 in 2022 and 2023. That was in 13 and 14 games respectively.

So if we’re being intentionally pedantic, Williams was right to assume that Taylor wouldn’t punt as much like he did in college…

The fact is, the Bears offense stinks. It should shine with D’Andre Swift, DJ Moore, Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze performing all over the field. Instead, they have become an example of the importance of competent coaching and reliable offensive line play around a rookie quarterback.

The coaching change explains at least part of the punting problem. Chicago fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron after Week 10 and promoted Thomas Brown to OC. Brown’s last appearance as an offensive player was with the Carolina Panthers in 2023, during Bryce Young’s disastrous rookie season, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he didn’t magically rescue the struggling offense. When head coach Matt Eberflus was fired two weeks later, Brown was promoted to interim coach. Again, it shouldn’t shock anyone that things turned out this way.