“Quarterbacks do go to Chicago to die.” James Jones, the Super Bowl XLV champion and Packers icon, didn’t mince words when dissecting Caleb Williams’s rocky rookie season. The Bears’ No. 1 pick threw for 3,541 yards and 20 touchdowns in 2024, but his 68 sacks—third-most in NFL history—painted a grim picture of a kid drowning in a lake of pressure. Jones, never one to bite his tongue, slammed Williams for his film-study confessionals while dragging the Bears’ culture into the light. ‘This ain’t Madden, You don’t just ‘sim to end’ and hope for a W.’

“If I’m a Receiver, and they’re Like, ‘Hey, you’re going to this team’… I’m like, dang, the quarterback’s trash.” Jones’s critique cut deeper than a Lambeau Leap into a snowbank. “I don’t know Caleb Williams personally, man. You know what I mean? I want to call nobody a liar, but I played for a long time in the National Football League. We all did. There is a time in a day when we watch film as an offense, to where we watch a film as a position group,” he admitted, channeling the skepticism of every QB who’s ever worn navy and orange.

“So you’re not going to sit up here and tell me that you ain’t watched film with your quarterbacks, or you didn’t watch film with your offense, because you do.” Williams had claimed he watched tape alone, “with no instruction” from coaches—a revelation that hit like a Hail Mary interception in the NFC North. Jones, who once led the NFL in touchdowns (14 in 2012), wasn’t buying it.

“Now, my receiver coach when I was a rookie, Jimmy Robinson said, you know what, JJ? Here goes a disc player, because it wasn’t no odd pass when I was a rookie. Here go, put these CDs in there and watch this tape…So this is crazy to me. My little kids right now are 11 and 13, Ocho, and if you put them up here right now and said draw cover two, they will draw cover two.” Jones barked, his voice sharp enough to slice through Soldier Field’s wind.

“Caleb, you just came from USC with Lincoln Riley. Don’t tell me you can’t go in here and watch a film on yourself and say it’s man-to-man third and five. Yeah. It’s cover two on second down. You can’t tell me you can’t do that.” The jab wasn’t just at Williams; it was a flare shot over the Bears’ entire operation, right to ex-coach Matt Eberflus.

It’s like playing ‘Dark Souls’ on rookie mode and still getting stomped by the first boss. Caleb Williams’s 62.5% completion rate and 489 rushing yards hinted at brilliance, but his 68 sacks screamed systemic failure.

Caleb Williams’s dilemma, burning out ex-coach Matt Eberflus

“No One Tells Me What to Watch. I Just Turn It On.” The ESPN bombshell from Seth Wickersham’s book, ‘American Kings’, dropped like a fumble in the red zone: Williams’s film sessions were DIY projects. ‘No guidance,’ he told his dad, was Eberflus that bad for the Bears? For a franchise that once thought Mitch Trubisky was the answer, this was déjà vu with extra mustard.

Jones, though, refused to let the Bears’ staff off the hook. “That’s disrespectful to your coaches, man. Because I know your coaches and NFL coaches in particular put in a lot of time, and they don’t leave that building. And that’s where I had the biggest issue, Chase,” he said, his tone shifting from fiery to funeral. “You’re lying to the people talking about you, just sitting here watching a film by yourself, not knowing what to do.” That’s really a waste of time.

Post Matt Eberflus exit, Enter Ben Johnson, the new HC tasked with fixing this gridiron ‘Inception ‘- level mess. Johnson, who turned Jared Goff into a Pro Bowler, now has to reprogram Williams, a QB who, statistically, broke Bears rookie records but mentally might still be hearing ghosts. Greatness is there, but Bears fans, scarred by decades of ‘almosts’, know better than to trust a Hail Mary.

There’s a cruel beauty in Chicago’s QB saga—a cycle of hope and heartbreak as reliable as Lake Michigan’s waves. Williams’s 47-yard moon shot against the Lions? Poetry. His 24-yard scramble to slay the Packers’ 11-game streak? Legendary. But poetry doesn’t block edge rushers, and legends don’t fix film rooms.

Jones, ever the realist, left a mic drop for the ages: “We blame the Bears coaching staff for a lot. There are a lot of situations, end-of-game management, that they deserve blame.” For Caleb Williams, the 2025 season isn’t about arm talent—it’s about survival. And for the Bears? It’s time to prove they’re more than a graveyard with goalposts.

As the wind howls off the lake, one question lingers. Can a kid from USC rewrite a curse as old as Ditka’s sweater? Or is Chicago destined to be the place where potential goes to hibernate? Buckle up, Bears fans. The sequel’s just getting started.