One thing that has stood out about Caleb Williams is that he’s surprisingly chill about the media criticism he receives. Some quarterbacks might bristle at some of the things said about them. Williams has heard a vast blend of different critiques during his football career. He holds the ball too long and is too obsessed with big plays. He’s not a great leader because he has terrible body language. He paints his nails and has a unique fashion sense, which means he’s a sissy. Williams has heard it all and isn’t bothered by it. He understands that comes with being a high-profile athlete who’s enjoyed lots of personal success.

It’s all noise to him. However, there is one exception. Williams admitted to Jason Lieser of the Chicago Sun-Times that one criticism thrown around has gotten under his skin on more than one occasion. It’s this idea that he doesn’t work hard.

Williams admitted, however, there is one part that gets to him. When people get so caught up in his stature, effervescence and eccentricities, they don’t take him seriously.

It fuels a misconception that he’s more concerned about being famous than great, that he’s not fully committed. Few insults could strike deeper than that for someone who used to get up at 4 a.m. to work out as a kid and sees his ambitious goals on the home screen of his phone every time he picks it up.

‘‘I’ve been serious since I was 9,’’ Williams said, sharpening his tone. ‘‘People get distracted by some of those things, and they think that the work was not put in over a consistent amount of time. . . . That gets lost.’’

He added that ‘‘hard work is everything.’’

It is one thing to have your life choices questioned, but you cannot do anything about it. People differ and will say such things. However, acting like they know you personally and the time you put in is an egregious insult. Williams has sacrificed so much of his youth to reach this point. Having ignorant people act like they know anything about that is ridiculous.

Caleb Williams is out to prove something this season.

Nobody inside Halas Hall has once questioned his work ethic. Head coach Ben Johnson and GM Ryan Poles have praised him at every turn. Even teammates get a bit testy when such questions come up. Caleb Williams is plenty of things, but lazy is not one of them. He puts in as much or more time than anybody. It was never and should never be about his desire to be great.

One thing about Williams is that he has a maniacal competitive streak. He keeps close track of the doubters, both in the media and among fans. Every time they throw shade, he files it away for later. There’s been enough this offseason to fill an entire file cabinet. It has felt like the quarterback is getting better rapidly in training camp. Almost as if he’s out to prove something. Doubt him at your own risk.

There was no telling what the Chicago Bears would truly get when they hired Ben Johnson. GM Ryan Poles had spent months since firing head coach Matt Eberflus researching various candidates. He knew early on that Johnson was likely the top candidate, but he didn’t want to dilute the process by pushing his thoughts on others helping with the search. Once everybody else reached the same conclusion, Poles understood what he had to do. He put on the full-court press to ensure Johnson was the Bears’ next head coach.

Once done, the only thing he could do was wait and see what happened. Everybody knew Johnson’s reputation as an offensive mind. What they couldn’t be sure of was how he’d handle motivating players. Plenty of guys could be great with Xs and Os. Only a select few understand how to manage personalities. It didn’t take long for Poles to recognize how savvy Johnson was in that department. In fact, some of the coach’s tactics reminded him of somebody the GM had worked with in the past.

He told the story to Sean Hammond of the Chicago Tribune.

Our setup is very different than Detroit. And it’s been cool to see going practice by practice. It’s almost like one day is Rome (Odunze’s) day, and you realize that day that maybe DJ (Moore) didn’t get a touch. And then all of a sudden DJ’s getting touches (the next day), and it has this really unique way to keep all of these offensive weapons engaged and active.

It brings me back — and I don’t compare them, it’s just the great one that I’ve been with, which was Andy (Reid) — (he) had the ability to do that as well. That creates excitement, that keeps everyone alive and a part of the identity of what you’re trying to do. It’s kind of using scheme to amplify the talent that we have, which would make it very different than what Detroit’s doing.

Ryan Poles dropping an Andy Reid mention is no small thing.

He worked under the future Hall of Fame head coach for almost a decade, winning a Super Bowl in 2019. The GM knows better than most what kind of impact Reid had on the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive evolution. Part of that was understanding player psychology. If he wanted everybody to buy in, he had to find ways to get everybody involved. That meant making them think their number could be called anytime. Just look at the Chiefs’ playoff run this past season. They featured Travis Kelce in the divisional round win over Houston. Then in the AFC championship, Xavier Worthy got eight touches for 101 yards and a touchdown.

Johnson does those same things. Ryan Poles understood immediately what it would do for the morale of the Bears offense. The collective buy-in will be apparent once everybody believes a game could be their time to shine.

Ben Johnson has said from the outset that the Chicago Bears‘ offense would look considerably different from what he ran in Detroit. That isn’t because the head coach is trying to be cheeky. It has everything to do with the personnel he has on hand. The Lions’ offense had different strengths compared to the Bears’. His job is to mold the scheme into something that maximizes those strengths. One that appears to have people genuinely excited inside Halas Hall is the tight end situation with Cole Kmet and Colston Loveland.

Talent-wise, this is probably the best pairing Chicago has fielded in over a decade, at least. Probably longer. Johnson had Sam LaPorta in Detroit, but didn’t have anybody remotely close to him on the rest of the depth chart. That is no longer the case. He has two tight ends who can be legitimate weapons in the passing game. If you want an idea of the vibe inside the building, just listen to what GM Ryan Poles had to say to the Chicago Tribune. People can already see the possibilities, and there are many.

It wasn’t too long ago before the draft that Cole (Kmet) was our main, No. 1 tight end. Then all of a sudden you go through the draft (and select Colston Loveland with the 10th pick) and you have two (tight ends) with two different skill sets, and you can see (Johnson’s) brain start to twist and turn, like: All right, this is what we can do now to put a defense in a tough position and also to allow everybody else to have success. Shoot, we saw that on the first drive of the preseason game (against the Buffalo Bills).

Cole Kmet and Colston Loveland create pick-your-poison situations.

Kmet himself mentioned how he noticed the benefits almost immediately. Having Loveland on the field has forced defenses to account for him by putting a safety on him. That creates a big problem. It means Cole Kmet is matched up with a linebacker. Most linebackers aren’t big enough or fast enough to cover him. You saw it on that opening drive against Buffalo. Loveland caught a pass on a bootleg to start things off. The Bills began shadowing him with safety help. A couple of plays later, Kmet gashed them for 29 yards. A linebacker was on him in coverage. This was without any fancy scheming or motions. It was pure talent taking advantage of mismatches. No wonder the Bears are excited. They know this can turn their offense into something fearsome if deployed properly.

The Chicago Bears don’t have too many glaring issues on their roster going into the regular season. Injuries have eaten into their depth at edge rusher, running back, and cornerback. Outside of that, things seem settled. There is, of course, one glaring exception. The Bears still don’t have a definitive starter at left tackle. This is a big problem considering it might be the second-most important position on the team besides the quarterback. GM Ryan Poles has spent not inconsiderable resources trying to fix that position since he arrived in 2022.

Thus far, the results have been mixed.

Braxton Jones established himself as a reliable starter in 2022 and held the job for the next three years. Unfortunately, a lack of power and injury setbacks opened the door for the team to go hunting for replacements. It started with former 3rd round pick Kiran Amegadjie last year and soon included 2nd round pick Ozzy Trapilo. Despite these investments, no clear option has emerged. Poles isn’t usually one to express frustration, but you could see it in his comments about the issue to Sean Hammond of the Chicago Tribune.

They’re all on different planes, and that’s been the most challenging part of it. So you have Braxton, and you’re trying to evaluate a guy that’s coming back from a pretty significant injury. And then looking at last year’s tape as kind of the bar, can he get to that point and better? But he’s not quite there yet. He’s closing in on it.

But then the person he’s competing with (Trapilo) is a person that’s never played in the league versus Kiran, who didn’t have his first year, coming from a smaller school (Amegadjie missed most of the 2024 offseason after an injury at Yale). And then Theo enters the conversation, who from a length standpoint may not have everything but from a foot speed and toughness (standpoint) has a lot of things that you like.

So kind of piecing it all together and projecting is what we’re trying to do. Right now we just want one of those guys to take it and play free and not to lose the job but to take the job. (That’s) what we’re looking for as we go down the stretch here.

Ryan Poles can only hope somebody overcomes their roadblock to step up.

Right now, it feels like the Bears are betting that it will be Jones. He’s already a proven commodity as a starter and seems to have progressed in his recovery from the leg injury last year. Trapilo isn’t ready yet. He needs more time, and there aren’t many opportunities to show it once the season begins. Rumors have persisted that the Bears like Amegadjie the most from a pure talent standpoint, but a mid-training camp injury slowed his progress. Benedet having short arms is not something he can do anything about. There are cases of good left tackles in the NFL with below-average length, but not many. This is why Ryan Poles and Ben Johnson haven’t declared a winner. They’re hoping someone emerges from the dust to claim the job. Seize it with both hands. If they can’t, it reinforces the reality that Chicago may have to go hunting for a solution next spring.

GM Ryan Poles retained personnel control when the Chicago Bears elected to revamp their power structure. It is how the organization has always operated, so the McCaskey family was unlikely to change it unless they opted to find a new general manager. Still, something felt different when the Bears entered the 2025 offseason with new head coach Ben Johnson. Nowhere was that seen more than in the draft. For the first time, it seemed as if the team was taking calculated risks on players with semi-questionable concerns.

Colston Loveland was recovering from shoulder surgery. Luther Burden had numerous rumors about his work ethic in practice. Luke Newman was considered undraftable because of his size and perceived lack of power. All three players were major standouts in the preseason and have excelled throughout training camp. Some wondered if Johnson was the one who pushed Poles to step outside his comfort zone and take some calculated risks on guys. The GM all but confirmed this was the case during an interview with Sean Hammond of the Chicago Tribune.

And we got with the staff, we got with Ben, to go through position by position of what’s ideal, what’s the prototype for what we want to do. Knowing that some of this, there’s a little bit of transition from where we were, what we were doing, to now. So that conversation was probably the most impactful up front.

Then the other thing is just, as we were studying the center position, that’s a pressure point of an offensive line. And with a young quarterback, you want to put as much as possible on the center to let the quarterback play as fast as possible. So just going through our process when we acquired Drew (Dalman), making sure he was capable of doing those things.

Ben Johnson was said to have a sharp eye for talent in Detroit.

He was the primary driving force behind drafting Pro Bowl tight end Sam LaPorta. He also had a hand in acquiring Jameson Williams and Jahmyr Gibbs as well. Most people believed Ben Johnson wouldn’t have come to Chicago unless he was guaranteed a strong voice in the personnel selection process. Poles, to his credit, has always been amenable to such things. He gave Matt Eberflus plenty of say in those decisions, too. This fact may have hurt the Bears before, but now it could work to their advantage. If Johnson is as sharp-eyed as they say, he might already be changing their fortunes for the better in the draft moving forward. That is a big deal for their championship aspirations.

It isn’t unusual to see GM Ryan Poles and assistant GM Ian Cunningham on the scouting trail this time of year. College games are underway, and it’s time to evaluate the upcoming draft class. However, it gets pretty interesting when the two show up together at the same game. College reporter Jack Soble revealed that Poles and Cunningham were in attendance for the big matchup between Notre Dame and Miami. No big deal, right? Executives always attend high-profile matchups. Except it is a little more notable in this scenario.

The thing to remember is that Poles trusts Cunningham more than anybody regarding talent evaluation. That is why he brought him in as assistant GM. It is unlikely the two would be together unless it were important. There is evidence to back this up. In November of 2022, both were spotted at the Clemson-Syracuse matchup. It proved significant as the game featured several defensive tackles, including three eventual draft picks. While the Bears didn’t pick any of them from this game, it did end up tipping their hand the following April.

Chicago took Gervon Dexter and Zacch Pickens in the 2nd and 3rd rounds.

Ian Cunningham and Ryan Poles are pointing in a specific direction again.

When looking at the matchup between the Irish and Hurricanes, it is heavily slanted toward the trenches. You have no fewer than four players who are currently considered top 100 prospects.

• EDGE Rueben Bain Jr. (Miami)
• OT Francis Mauigoa (Miami)
• OG Charles Jagusah (Notre Dame)
• OT Aamil Wagner (Notre Dame)

Both Bain and Mauigoa are considered 1st round prospects. It isn’t a secret that the Bears have serious needs at left tackle and edge rusher. Ian Cunningham and Ryan Poles attending this game is a dead giveaway that their thinking is in the same place. Obviously, this game doesn’t mean the Bears will end up drafting any of those players, but it is a strong indicator that edge rusher and tackle will be their focus come next April.