For the first time in a long time, the Chicago Bears have what appears to be legitimate hope for a young quarterback. Caleb Williams has led the team to a 4-2 record in the competitive NFC North. In the 35-16 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in London, he became the first rookie since 2000 to throw for at least 210 yards and four touchdowns while completing at least 75 percent of his passes. Williams also rushed for 56 yards.
The No.1 overall draft pick and the Bears will have a bye week before a highly anticipated showdown against the No.2 overall pick Jayden Daniels and the Washington Commanders on Oct. 27. We thought this would be a great time to catch up with Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander.
Telander, a former Northwestern University cornerback and punter, has covered sports in Chicago for decades. He also worked at Sports Illustrated and ESPN. We talked to Telander about Williams and his career in sports journalism.
Awful Announcing: What is the excitement level in Chicago these days?
Rick Telander: “It’s delirium. Everybody is excited about the Bears. There’s been this endless search for the next great quarterback to come after Sid Luckman, who played for the Bears from 1939 to 1950. There have been some teases along the way, a couple of good quarterbacks who did OK for a while but nobody like Caleb Williams. And he happens to have a stretch in his rookie year where he looks good.”
Why has he improved so quickly?
“Well, there’s two things. One, don’t forget, he’s played some pretty poor teams—the Jaguars (1-5), the Rams (1-4), the Panthers (1-5), and the Titans (1-4). That being said, you take a rookie out of college and you put it in the NFL, everything looks the same only it’s like a 33 1/3 RPM record suddenly set on 78. It’s just fast as hell, and that can blow your mind. There’s no way to prepare for that, except for seeing it.
Now he’s seen it, and he’s realizing some of these things he did in college might not work. They might have told him, ‘Caleb, unless you want to get killed, don’t be doing these 360 pirouettes out of a near tackle because you’re going to pirouette right into some defensive end who is going to crush you.’ I think he figured that out. I think the coaches have realized what he can do and what he should do.”
How has Williams handled the media?
“He doesn’t seem to be affected by the ups and downs. He’s remained, I think, reasonably humble, not falsely humble, while being confident. That’s important. Just because he’s been in the spotlight since he was at Oklahoma and Southern Cal, that doesn’t mean he can handle the media well. A lot of people (don’t), even at the end of their entire careers. He seems to have a lively personality that isn’t going to come up with false enemies and say that everybody’s against him. He doesn’t have to be rude. He doesn’t seem like he takes great offense at questions that might be redundant.”
How much credit does Matt Eberflus deserve, especially since he seemed to be on the hot seat not too long ago?
“You always give coaches credit when they win. That’s pretty much it. If you happen to get a lifeline thrown to you, an inflatable life raft, and it happens to be the No.1 quarterback in the entire draft, Eberflus rose to the opportunity. He hasn’t done anything wrong to this point. He was criticized for being bland. Sometimes that blandness is just calmness, and it’s what players need. There’s no issue. There hasn’t been one of these divisive things. …. These guys seem to be going all out for him. That’s another thing. If your team doesn’t like you, they don’t believe in you, you’re not going to be very successful. Credit to Eberflus. Credit to the play calling, the quarterback, the wide receivers.”
When Daniels started fast was there a concern that this could be Bryce Young/C.J. Stroud situation?
“The wins started coming at the right time. If the Bears were 1-5 right now that would be a discussion. ‘We picked the wrong guy’. Because they did it before with Mitch Trubisky. They could have had Patrick Mahomes. So, yes, there’s always that concern. But it seems almost impossible that he couldn’t be a good quarterback. If he turns out not to be one, it still would be mystifying. He did things in college that do translate to the NFL. His arm is strong. He’s athletic enough. He’s not the biggest guy. I think he’s only 6’1″. He’s sturdy enough. Daniels might be a stupendous athlete, but Caleb’s a good athlete too.”
How much are people looking forward to Williams vs. Daniels?
“I don’t think they would mind if both guys threw for 400 yards. There can be more than one great quarterback in the league. I think what people would love to see in Chicago—they like to see good defense but say you win a game 40-36. To be in an offensive game, not just some grind-it-out thing and win would be exciting.
How did you go from a football player to a sports writer?
“I always wanted to be a writer since I was a little kid. I didn’t think I could be. I was an English literature major and a creative writing minor. I took German in college and philosophy. I tried to set myself up so that I could know enough substantially to be a writer. But I didn’t tell anybody because I thought it’d be so embarrassing to say that’s what I was.
“At the end of my senior year of playing football, I wrote a few columns for the Daily Northwestern because a guy named David Israel was the sports editor there. I didn’t know how to type so I’d write them in longhand. I’d write them on a yellow legal pad and then David would type them up. I slowly eased my way into freelancing for magazines and newspapers.”
How did you get involved with The Sportswriters on TV, a show way ahead of its time?
“That was the first televised roundtable of sports experts. Previous to that, if you wrote sports, you were considered too ugly to be on TV and too illiterate to be on the radio. So, they changed that. They picked me to be on because George Langford couldn’t do it because he was an editor at the Tribune and had to work on all the days when we’d film. I was writing for Sports Illustrated so I had a different schedule… It was groundbreaking.”
Why was the lighting so bad? It looked like you guys were in an interrogation room.
“We should have like a German guard watching with a cigarette between his fingers, saying ‘We have ways of making you talk.’ No, it was supposed to be centered on that green felt poker table with papers all over the place. Those were legit. (Bill) Gleason would come with these papers and (Bill) Jauss too. They’d be reading them right up to the last second. We wanted the entire focus to be right there. No background, no nothing. And we didn’t do makeup. Those guys refused to do makeup. That was fine. I didn’t want to do it either. They had to do the lights to make us not look green, shiny, or greasy.”
Any funny memories from the show?
“One time, Jauss had five stitches sticking out of his bald head. He crashed into something. He got stitches with a little dried blood on there. The stitches were sticking up. I remember that we didn’t even powder that. (Producer) John Roach came in after and said ‘Damn it. When you have stitches like that, you’re going to put a bandaid on next time.'”
Did you at least explain to the audience why you had a person on TV with stitches?
“No, no, no. Figure it out yourself.”