Bears' Caleb Williams wanted to be 'the greatest' — and was willing to work for it

Nam Y. Huh/AP

Everyone’s got their origin story.

This is Caleb Williams’.

He’s 10 years old and a bruising defensive player, someone who likes hitting so much that when his parents put him in flag football at age 4 he started tackling other kids. He’s at a football camp in San Antonio, Texas — and his team is getting demolished by a squad quarterbacked by Harrison Bailey, who’s now at Louisville.

The game ended, and Williams is crushed. He hates losing. He’s also well aware that the quarterback on his own team happens to be the son of the person calling the plays.

Frustrated, he tells his dad Carl that he never wants to feel this way again — and that he’d like to play a new position.

“I told him that I didn’t want to have and feel that pain that I felt after losing that game,” Williams said this week. “I wanted to change to QB, and I wanted to be the greatest.

“He asked me: Do I want to? ‘Are you sure?’ He asked me again. I said yes.”

That’s when the real work began.

Williams and his father hatched their plan. Without it, Williams might be playing a different position — and he certainly wouldn’t be the star the Bears took with the No. 1 overall pick in Thursday's draft.

Starting at age 10, every decision made by Williams and his family has been deliberate.

He worked out before and after school in the Washington D.C. suburbs of Maryland, often instead of hanging out with grade school friends. He ate the same breakfast for the next four years: eggs, ham, an Ensure shake and vitamins.

While at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., he often stayed at an apartment close to campus, sometimes by himself, to save a brutal commute to his family home.

He worked with quarterback coaches, trainers and media advisors. He joked to “The Verge” podcast earlier this month he could remember the names of coaches and teams he had as a kid but not schools or teachers.

“It was a bit lonely,” he said on the red carpet before Thursday’s draft. “But it molded me into the man I am today, the football player I am today, the teammate I am today.”

Ryan Sun/AP

‘Schedule, plan, routine’

Such single-mindedness didn’t come naturally at first. How could it for anyone?

“I would say most of it you have to learn,” Williams said. “I don’t think anybody’s born with those things. You have to learn and you have to work towards them and you have to have people around you that are going to tell you right from wrong, whether it’s your family members, mentors, friends, and things like that. And then you take it from there and you make choices of how you’re going to be — whether it’s the actual physical trait of what you do, or whether it’s actually something like leadership.”

His father Carl is routine-oriented, and helped his son become the same way.

“Schedule, plan, routine,” the quarterback said. “Commit to it — and you go get it.”

To be that deliberate at such a young age is rare, even for the small percentage of athletes that reach their dreams of playing professional sports.

“Every step of theirs has been very intentional, very well thought out,” USC coach Lincoln Riley said.

In that sense, Williams’ success is that of those around him. The reason he’s so loyal to his inner circle is because they’ve been sacrificing for him almost as long as he’s made sacrifices himself.

‘He’s not scared for greatness’

When Matt Eberflus met with Williams on campus at USC, the Bears coach said learned about his journey and exactly how much “time he put into really studying the position and really working his craft" at quarterback.

“He had high goals, and it started really early in terms of his family,” general manager Ryan Poles said. “Obviously, it starts with him. But putting him in a position where he can be successful. He fell in love with the quarterback position.

“They really did everything they could possibly do to get him in that position where he could keep ascending and achieving all of those big goals that he has.”

Williams talks openly of winning several Super Bowls and becoming the best quarterback of all time.

“He’s not scared for greatness,” Riley said. “He’s not scared to put it out there.”

Washington receiver Rome Odunze, said Williams simply speaks things into existence — including, perhaps their pairing on the Bears.

"That comes from a confidence in himself and the people around him to continue to have success ... " said Odunze, whom the Bears took ninth Thursday. "I want to go out there and do legendary things. That takes legendary goals and the not-shy-ness to go out there and say that you’re gonna go out there and do it.”

Williams likes to examine the reasoning and rationale behind every decision. Riley, who recruited Williams to Oklahoma and then brought him along to USC with him, said he craves feedback.

“I don’t know that I’ve had any player that came up to me more and just like wanted to sit down and talk about how he could get better …” he said. “He just always wanted to be talking about that — and always wanted more.”

When the coronavirus canceled his senior season at Gonzaga, Williams enrolled early at Oklahoma and took both high school and college classes virtually. Before he became a star, he played in the Sooners’ spring game but was on the bench to start the season. Riley helped manage his frustrations.

“It’s a balance between the fire to want to compete and knowing that you’re good enough to do it … ” Riley said. “With also having an understanding that it is going to take some time, there is going to be some ups and downs, there is going to be a learning curve no matter who you are.

“I think the biggest thing for me was helping him find that balance. Because I didn’t want to extinguish the competitive fire that he has.”

The Bears won’t, either, though he's sure to have his own growing pains in the pros.

“You put dreams and goals in front of you that you aren’t able to reach within a year or two,” Williams said. “And you try to go get ‘em."