When Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill hinted last offseason that Caleb Williams [reminded him of Patrick Mahomes](https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears/2024/08/18/on-and-off-the-field-caleb-williams-has-the-right-touch), the [Bears](https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears) quarterback took it in stride.
“It’s respect,” Williams said a year ago. “It’s cool and all, but I’m Caleb Williams. Patrick Mahomes is Patrick Mahomes. Tyreek Hill is Tyreek Hill. Much love to them. … But we’re here to win games for the Chicago Bears.”
Williams didn’t do much of that as a rookie, going 5-12 and watching as his offensive coordinator and head coach get fired midseason. The Bears are more optimistic in his second year after landing head coach Ben Johnson to be Williams’ play-caller. The franchise has been fooled before, though.
The Bears are far from the only team in the NFL trying to land their version of Mahomes, the Chiefs’ superstar quarterback who will start against them in their preseason finale Friday night at Arrowhead Stadium. But the Bears are the only one who has tried, and whiffed, so often.
Starting with when they took Mitch Trubisky eight spots ahead of Mahomes, the Bears have been the only team to draft three quarterbacks in the top 11 since 2017 — Williams No. 1 in 2024, Trubisky No. 2 in 2017 and Justin Fields No. 11 in 2021.
Thirteen NFL franchises haven’t drafted a single quarterback in the top 11 during that time. Only two teams have even done it twice — the Cardinals and Jets. Not surprisingly, the three have been in the bottom quarter of the NFL since then. The Bears rank 24th in wins. The Cardinals, who took Josh Rosen and Kyler Murray, are 28th. The Jets, who drafted Zach Wilson and Sam Darnold, are 31st.
The Chiefs? They drafted one quarterback — Mahomes — and have won a league-high 100 games since 2017, compared to the Bears’ 54.
Williams was likened to Mahomes coming out of USC because of his various arm angles, willingness to throw on the run and propensity for the spectacular. Not all saw it that way, though — the Broncos’ Sean Payton thought Williams logged too many sacks, interceptions and fumbles in college. Still, the comparison between the two will continue, in part because of the fact that the Bears could have drafted Mahomes in 2017.
Mahomes said two years ago he was told by a third party the Bears didn’t plan on drafting a quarterback — but that he was atop their list if that were to change.
“It wasn’t that I thought the Bears were going to draft me,” Mahomes said. “But I was told that if they drafted a quarterback, I would be the quarterback they drafted. That wasn’t directed from their people, but that was told to my camp.”
Mahomes, though, wanted to go to the Chiefs. Matt Nagy, then a Chiefs assistant, met with him during his visit to Kansas City and told him what head coach Andy Reid would ask him about in their next meeting. The Chiefs eventually traded up from No. 27 to pick him 10th.
The Bears took Trubisky, and eventually went back on the quarterback carousel.
If Williams is going to succeed where Fields and Trubisky failed, it’s going to take time. Williams knows improvement is a multi-year process.
“It’s been my mindset since I’ve been a little child, to keep growing. …” Williams said. “If that’s handling everything at the line, handling everything and taking things off of other people’s plates, that’s what it is. Being able to do that consistently over the next couple of years is important for me.”
He’ll take one final preseason step Friday night — Johnson said his starters will play, though he wouldn’t say for how long. Williams was sharp in his exhibition debut Sunday, going 6-for-10 for 107 yards, one touchdown and a 130 passer rating. He led the Bears on a 92-yard touchdown drive on their first possession and a punt on their second.
Friday marks the fourth-straight year the Bears have faced the Chiefs, be it in the preseason or regular season. It reads like a road map of false hopes.
Matt Eberflus coached his first-ever game in the 2022 preseason finale, which also served as a return to Soldier Field for Nagy, the former Bears head coach. Eberflus won all three preseason games and then two of his first three regular-season contests before losing 13 of 14 to end the season.
The Bears went to Arrowhead Stadium in Week 3 of the 2023 season riding a 12-game losing streak and having watched defensive coordinator Alan Williams leave because of inappropriate activity days earlier. Fields posted a 58.7 passer rating — compared to Mahomes’ 127.3 — in a 41-10 loss. Tight end Travis Kelce caught a touchdown in front of girlfriend Taylor Swift, who was attending her first Chiefs game.
In the final week of the 2024 preseason, the Bears went to Kansas City with new hope — they’d drafted Williams and added coordinator Shane Waldron, running back D’Andre Swift and receivers Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze. Eberflus beat the Chiefs to finish the exhibition season 4-0. Three months later, the Bears would fire Waldron, followed by Eberflus, to start over again.
Now it’s time for the Williams and Johnson pairing to test themselves against the best — and be compared to a quarterback for whom there’s really no comparison.