Caleb Williams addressed a recent book excerpt about his pre-draft misgivings about the Bears during a press conference from the Bears’ OTAs on Wednesday.
In _American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback,_ Seth Wickersham quoted Williams’s father Carl saying that “Chicago is [the place quarterbacks](https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/caleb-williams-wanted-to-spurn-the-bears-join-the-vikings) go to die” and telling agents that he didn’t want his son playing for the team because of their poor history with quarterbacks. It also quoted Caleb Williams as saying that he wanted to get to the Vikings and he said on Wednesday that he had a good visit with the Bears’ NFC North rivals before the draft.
Williams said that it was natural to consider all options given the importance of where he landed to start his NFL career, but that he then moved on to visit with the Bears and came to a “deliberate and determined answer that I wanted to come here.”
“I wanted to come here and be the guy and a be a part and be a reason why the Chicago Bears turn this thing around,” Williams said. “That last thing that was said in all of that I think was the most important thing is that I wanted to be here. I love being here. I love my teammates.”
Williams said he thought it was important to address the reporting because it could become a distraction.
“It wasn’t something that we wanted to happen at this point,” Williams said. “We’re focused on the present, we’re focused on now, we’re focused on trying to get this ship moving in the right direction.”
Williams called the challenge of breaking the trend of Bears quarterbacks while turning the team into a winner is an “enticing one” and he knows that’s why he, head coach Ben Johnson and others are in Chicago. They’ll continue working to fulfill that goal so that any narratives about Williams’s past thoughts fade into oblivion.