Caleb Williams' rookie season being such a disappointment in almost every area has a lot of tentacles of blame. Three offensive coordinators over the course of the season brough a unique lack of continuity, which exacerbated the issues he had on his way to taking a league-high 68 sacks.
With all that was done to improve things around him this offseason, how big a season this is for Williams can't be understated and it's impossible to escape the sentiment. To his credit, he appears to be embracing hard coaching from head coach Ben Johnson.
Back in May, controversy was stirred when some excerpts from the book "American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback" by ESPN' Seth Wickersham surfaced. Among the revelations that came directly from Williams in the part of the book about him (via his father) was how Bears' coaches left him to watch film on his own.
'No one tells me what to watch,” Caleb Williams told his dad. “I just turn it on.”
Eventually, former Bears head coach Matt Eberflus addressed that controversy with exactly the expected rebuttal during an appearance on The Doomsday Podcast.
“In the development of the quarterback position, and really all my positions at the Bears, we always had daily, coached film sessions. That was all throughout the entire year. So, that’s what I observed. That’s where it was.”
Williams shouldn't have shared with his dad what he did about apparently having no guidance when watching film last season. Eberflus' response, though somewhat delayed, was also expected. The full truth will never really be known, but we've got sides to the story from two principal players and when it comes down to it they both are at fault for how things went last year.
Insider establishes lesson Caleb Williams must learn (if he hasn't already)
On "SportsCenter" Sunday morning, ESPN's Jeremy Fowler talked about an intangible aspect of Williams' growth as a quarterback.
"Football maturity is going to be a big thing for him," Fowler said. via Bleacher Report. "Leaguewide, talking to other teams who are watching it closely because the ability is massive but how does he comport himself on the field? The Bears have already been working with him on body language, how you're handling yourself in the huddle, on the sidelines when a play doesn't go right. And the word out of Chicago is he's handling himself well there. "
Reporting on how other teams are watching Williams to see how he progresses in the "football maturity" category reeks of an early-July, pre-training camp story to fill space during the slowest time on the NFL calendar. And, right on cue, Fowler passed along sentiment from the previous Bears' coaching staff on the topic.
"Now, some of the previous Bears coaches were not overly thrilled, I was told, that he made public that he was watching film by himself", Fowler continued. "They felt like he could've handled that a little better from an accountability standpoint. So those are all things people are watching but word is this offseason he's been great, really taken to Ben Johnson's hard, aggressive coaching."
Fowler did not receive any kind of inside information regarding how previous Bears' coaches feel about Williams saying he watched film by himself. Eberflus' aforementioned comments in a public forum stand as a gospel verse there, even if he didn't get into finer detail.
However, Fowler hit the nail on the head when he said Williams could've handled the film watching controversy better. A football matter like that should have been brought up behind the scenes, if not by Williams to his previous coaches, then certainly to his new coaches when they came in.
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As many lessons as Williams learned and is learning early in his career path, he surely learned a big extra one here when the film-watching quote surfaced. Saying something about it to a close family member, who then used a quote to help drive a clear narrative against his team, invited being made to look bad or immature.