Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams has been listening to the disrespect for almost a month waiting for his turn to clap back, which appears on the way this weekend against the Atlanta Falcons.
Williams suffered a hamstring strain in his team’s Week 2 loss to the Minnesota Vikings. He exited the field on a medical cart and in tears. However, initial reports of his injury, which Williams thoroughly disputed in an interview this week, painted the QB’s condition as somewhere between mild and moderate.
Unsurprisingly, NFL fans with inferiority complexes and ratings-hungry radio personalities everywhere ridiculed Williams as soft or dramatic or hurled whatever derogatory and offensive insults they were capable enough to conjure. And to the credit of those real-life trolls, they clearly got to the Bears QB.
Now, he plans to get them back.
Williams made his intentions clear by reposting a TikTok video edited in his honor, which says perhaps more than words alone can — or at least says it all more resoundingly.
CONTENT WARNING: There is one expletive uttered in the video.
“Caleb Williams just reposted this to TikTok 👀 #IcemanReturn 🥶,” CHGO Bears captioned its share of the footage to X.
Caleb Williams Claimed Media Got His Injury All Wrong
Williams said that every report about his hamstring was incorrect, then brushed off a persistent reporter several times when that person asked for a clarification on the grade of the muscle strain.
Doctors measure such injuries based on a scale of Grade 1 to Grade 3, with three being the worst. All constitute a tear of the muscle in question.
Some early reports indicated that Williams may have suffered only a Grade 1 strain, while the consensus was ultimately that he sustained a Grade 2 strain. The quarterback has missed three starts since the injury, during which Chicago is 2-1.
“Not being able to be out there was frustrating,” Williams said Thursday. “That was more of the tears or whatever that was. The other half of it was everybody making jokes and all that, but that doesn’t bother me.”
Bears Face Tough Stretch of Games Ahead of Week 10 Bye
It appears that, perhaps, Williams was not being entirely honest when he claimed to be unbothered by all of the public ridicule. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
The Bears are entering a tough, and critical, stretch of football starting with a trip to Atlanta. The Falcons are one of the best teams at pressuring opposing quarterbacks in the entire league, even despite losing arguably their top two pass-rushers prior to the season.
And upon the return of quarterback Michael Penix Jr. in Weeks 3 and 4, the Falcons were the best overall offense in the sport across that two-game run. Atlanta lost the Baltimore Ravens in overtime last weekend, allowing the game to slip away after Penix exited with a rib injury. However, he is healthy enough to play Sunday and will start against the Bears.
Chicago then turns around on a short week for a home contest with the New England Patriots on Thursday Night Football. The Bears will get 11 days after that to prepare for a trip to the West Coast where they will take on the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks at one of the league’s toughest road venues in a Monday Night Football showcase.
Rolling out an angry and motivated Williams might be exactly the factor Chicago needs to go 2-1 or 3-0 over that stretch and remain above .500 heading into Week 9 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Soldier Field before a Week 10 bye.
Bears QB Caleb Williams Calls Out Everyone With Video Ahead of Falcons Game