Caleb Williams’ college coach clears the air on the drama as best as he can
The 2024 NFL draft is still a few months away and already the talk surrounding top prospect Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears is heating up. It was taken to a new level last week when Collin Cowherd reported that the Williams camp had some concerns about him landing in Chicago at No. 1 overall.
Cowherd then backtracked on his comments during appearances on both ESPN 1000 and 670 The Score here in Chicago. While Cowherd reportedly has connections to the Caleb Williams camp and USC, it felt like he was just throwing stuff out there to, well, throw stuff out there.
As we begin Super Bowl week in Las Vegas, former Oklahoma and current USC head coach Lincoln Riley was on the Pat McAfee Show and he tried to clear the air on the drama with Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears.
“Yeah, I think it’s a total smoke screen. It’s people playing the game,” Riley said. “Knowing Caleb, location wise I don’t think he cares one bit about where he’s at. Like all of these franchises are in really good cities, there’s advantages to anywhere that you could go. He wants to win. He wants to be a guy that wants to play in this game that is coming up this week. And I think for him it’s less about location and it’s more about getting into the right situation where he knows he can continue develop and do the things that he needs to do to help a franchise be successful.”
That’s a pretty interesting quote. And Riley also mentions that he knows Caleb Williams would love to go first overall due to how competitive he is.
Plus, as the show pointed out in the question, we’ve seen this before as recent as last year when reports tried to put down CJ Stroud. Heck, it even happened with Justin Fields when he was coming out as a prospect a few years ago.
Lincoln Riley also talked about Caleb Williams’ camp
Here is what Riley said when McAfee asked about the whole “Caleb’s camp says this, Caleb’s camp says that” rumors going around including why Caleb Williams hasn’t talked:
“Yeah, he’s just very low key about it all,” Riley said on the show. “Honestly, the group of people he has around him are really, they were really, really low maintenance in all of the years we worked with him. Whether it was recruiting with them in the beginning or working with them in the last three years. Really low maintenance group. And Caleb wants it that way because again, he’s about one thing. He’s about ball and he’s about winning.”
Riley helped recruit and land Williams while at Oklahoma as the two were together there for one season before he took the job at USC and Williams followed. It’s safe to say that Riley does know Williams almost better than anyone at this point so we should take his words with importance.
Now, this doesn’t mean that there might not be concerns. I don’t think we will know that for sure, if ever.
The other thing to point out is that there is still two months until the NFL draft and there will be more ‘reports’ and ‘rumors’ about Williams, the Bears and the No. 1 pick. That’s just the nature of the business and the pre-draft process as it is a long one for players, teams, scouts, etc.
But it’s hard not to see the Bears taking Williams at No. 1 when the time comes to make that selection on the stage in Detroit, Michigan on Thursday, Nov. 25th. All signs are pointing to the Bears taking Caleb Williams in hopes of finally landing that franchise quarterback they have been seeking for years.
REPORT: Caleb Williams gives signal he wants Chicago Bears to draft him over Washington Commanders
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