Caleb Williams will step onto Soldier Field in Chicago in September and be hailed as the savior who will lead the team to the promised land.
After all, he was the top quarterback in college football and widely acclaimed as the star in a draft class that saw six called to the podium in the first round.
However, accolades do not win football games, and if Chicago’s history proves anything, it is that the organization had a terrible time developing young quarterbacks into winners.
Former NFL player and current analyst Emmanuel Acho told FS1’s Speak that he is not concerned with Williams’ talent.
Rather, he is worried about the first overall draft selection taking those talents to Chicago and finding success with the Bears.
Acho explained, “If you look at an organization and they’ve never had a certain something, and it’s the same something, I don’t look at the thing, I look at the organization.”
The Bears gave Williams everything but the city itself, and that will not be far off if he leads the team to a successful season.
But the track record, as Acho so correctly noted, is impossible to overlook.
The most recent examples are Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields, but there are decades of quarterback futility in the Windy City dating back to the 1960s.
If Williams is indeed the savior for a desperate NFL fan base, he will own Chicago like few have before.
But that will only happen if the team breaks with its unenviable tradition of being where promising quarterbacks go to fail.
