The most ballyhooed draft pick in the history of the Chicago Bears is wasting no time ushering in his own signature celebration.
Whenever cameras are near, Caleb Williams curls his five fingers inward for a “bear claw.”
Sometimes, he adds a scowling snarl for effect. Other times, his expression is emotionless. But he’s bringing the claw everywhere — the private jet with wide receiver Rome Odunze, a Chicago Cubs game, a Chicago Sky game, Halas Hall — and it’s either insane nobody in the Bears’ 105-year existence has made this a trend before or it’s Gen Z cringe fit for the 14-year-olds on TikTok. Either way, the claw is here to stay and everyone should get used to a quarterback who’s unlike any No. 1 pick before him.
The nail-painting. The fashion. The postgame puddle of tears. If scouts entered a football laboratory dead-set on creating a player who’s the diametric antithesis of everything Ditka and Butkus and Monsters of the Midway, it’d be USC’s flamboyant flamethrower. Surviving this market requires a rare layer of mental toughness. Expectations have butchered quarterbacks past. If Williams leaps into the stands to cry in his mother’s lap after a crushing late-season loss at Soldier Field, he’s got a better chance of being shoved by an eight-beers-deep diehard than gently consoled.
This could all combust in grisly fashion.
When it became clear the Chicago Bears and Williams were on a collision course at the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, those fans filling the stadium chanted “We Want Fields!” as if informing ownership that Justin Fields had officially passed their final hazing ritual for full initiation into some Delta Da Bears fraternity.