Patrick, thank you for joining us.
Hey, thank you for having me. Absolutely. Now before we get into Caleb and the Bears, do we have an update? I know Roma Dunze had a knee injury.
What's the latest on that? Rome got rolled up on with about five minutes left while he was blocking. He stayed in for one more play and seemed to pull up limping at the end of that.
Did not return. The Bears announced today that he was getting an MRI on that knee and that they're concerned about it. I talked to Rome after the game yesterday, made no mention of the injury. It wasn't anything that jumped out in person or really on tape until the Bears brought it up. So we will see. The Bears said that they'll let everybody know Wednesday.
A lot of times these things flip out long before then, but that would be a pretty big deal here in Chicago. We joke that on any other franchise, the number nine overall pick would be somebody that you're right about every single day. Because he has been Caleb Williams' shadow, Rome gets to kind of go about his business in relative anonymity. Obviously, the Bears need him and they need him to develop.
You can't do that if you've hurt him. Patrick Finley is joining us from the Chicago Sun-Times. You talk about Caleb Williams after game one, and it may not be a lot to kind of ascertain, but what are your initial thoughts about him and the elements they have surrounding him? Boy, this is the team that had won 10 games total in the previous two years.
Matt Eberhoof got 10 and 24 in his career. That's only one game off of the worst mark ever for a Bears coach in terms of winning percentage. So, you know, my first thought is winning a football game is hard to do and something that hasn't happened around here very often. And if the Bears can have Caleb develop while they're winning games, boy, that is the best of both worlds. I mean, they're not going to play the Titans every week and things are going to get a lot tougher from here.
But what a luxury to have Caleb post a really historically bad day statistically and still walk out with a smile on his face. Well, we saw that defense and the special teams have to help out for them to get that victory yesterday. Is that something that they're going to have to rely on for the remainder of the season?
Little pop-ups here, returns, blocks and what have you? They hope not. I think they think they have a really good defense.
You know, probably top five. You know, the most optimistic Bears player probably says they have a top five defense. So, you know, that defense will be with them all year. But boy, they need Caleb to play well in order to go where they want to go, not just this year but into the future. So, you know, there'll be a little bit of this going forward and I think the plan is by the second half of the season to not need just otherworldly performances by your defense and special teams to win you a football game. You know, Caleb doesn't have to be an A-plus quarterback for the Bears to win but he can't be a D either. And, you know, the quicker they can get him to a C-plus or B-minus in his rookie year, the better off they'll be.
And Patrick Finley is joining us of the Chicago Sun-Times. What's the confidence level in that offensive line? We all know about the names on offense. So, Romel Dunze dealing with the knee.
Keenan Allen, DJ Morin Swift. What are the thoughts on the line? Yeah, you know, if there was a reason to be worried this year, it was the offensive line and the defensive line. Darnell Rice, who they drafted in the first round last year, certainly seems like the answer at right tackle.
But that's probably it in terms of long-term projection. Braxton Jones is your left tackle. They had an opportunity to improve upon him this year and they didn't.
You know, they had a chance to, you know, move up in the draft and to look at free agency and they decided to stick with Braxton. So, this is a really big year for him. And then if you look inside, Tevin Jenkins, a left guard, is playing in the final year of his contract. Coleman Shelton, the former Rams center, is playing center. And then you've got Nate Davis, who was a big money acquisition for them two years ago, or last year, playing right guard. Davis has been up and down ever since he got here last season. And, you know, that's something that the Bears are still trying to figure out how to get the most out of him. You know, I think in the perfect world, they're probably, you know, somewhere between 12 and 15 in terms of offensive line in the country, but they didn't look like it on Sunday. C'Andre Swift got 10 carries for 30 yards.
That's not going to work. And Caleb Williams was running for his life at times. And that is just not the formula to break in a young quarterback. Well, Patrick, we heard so much at USC about Caleb Williams from the press conferences to postgame and behavior and fashion and what have you. And it seems here in Chicago, he's been embraced inside the building enough to be named captain. What have you observed that that people we don't hear anything about the USC stuff?
And I hope that I guess we don't, right? Yeah, I mean, the Bears, some of the Bears players, you know, when Caleb came here to interview with them before the draft, and then once they drafted him, the Bears players were curious what he was going to be like, because, you know, you hear these stories about him being kind of a Hollywood guy, and they have found the exact opposite. They have found a football junkie, a guy who works hard, who's there early and stays late, and somebody who is really engaging. I mean, the most interesting part, I think, of, you know, his early tenure with the Bears here is, you know, when he first got here, he was quiet in the locker room. He was respectful. You know, he wore number 13 at FC. He could have tried to wear 13 here, but Keenan Allen was coming over. And Keenan Allen really liked that number too.
So Caleb didn't push it, didn't ask, just said, no, I'll wear 18. And I thought that that was a really smart move for him, because I think the veterans on the team saw him do that and appreciated the respect he had for his elders. Now, if you've been here longer, he started to open up a couple of months ago, and the guys really like the personality that he has. You know, it can be really awkward when you're a young guy and you're trying to be a leader, and he has not made it awkward.
He has made it comfortable for everybody, including himself. And that's one of the reasons he's going to be the captain, or he's the captain here. And, you know, if everything goes well, he's going to be the captain here for a long time. Patrick Finley joining us from the Chicago Sun-Times.
Now, I could go back a month and two months and three months and after the draft and before enduring, it doesn't matter when the process was, there were still people going, OK, yeah, fine. We're going to get Caleb. We have Caleb.
But I would have preferred Justin Fields. Are the fans in Chicago, has that been put to rest? Have they kind of moved that out the way? Have they fully embraced Caleb now? Yeah, I think the fans have. You know, the lunatic fringe on social media is probably never going to go away.
But, you know, at some point you just throw your hands in the air and go, hey, man, you believe what you want to believe. But I do know that, you know, the Bears, you know, were pretty convinced by the end of last season that they were going to go draft a quarterback, you know, whether it was Caleb Williams or, you know, had the Panthers found a way to win more games, maybe it would have been somebody else. I mean, maybe it would have been J.J. McCarthy. I think that that was more attractive to them than bringing back Justin Fields for another season. So, you know, I don't blame Bears fans for falling in love with Justin. He did some really exciting things.
He's one of the great runners of the football and his position, maybe in the history of the sport. And, you know, the Bears franchise, their greatest quarterback ever, retired in 1950. You know, the people here are dying for a quarterback that they can believe in and that they can love. And, you know, some of them, I think, got carried away thinking that Justin was a little better than he was. I like to tell the story.
I have a 9-year-old little boy. He is on his third different Bears quarterback jersey right now, starting with Vince Trubisky in 2017 and then Justin Fields in 2021. So I don't blame fans for growing attached to these guys because, you know what, they usually leave town pretty quick.
Well, I hope this is certainly the last. When you think about the man who selected him with Ryan Polls, we know there was another Ryan before him. You also have Coach Iberflus. This has to be a success for them in their tenure with Caleb, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah, I think it does. Also, by the way, Matt, the coach, preceded Matt, the coach, and Ryan, the GM preceded Ryan, the GM, which is very good. Yes, yeah, this has to be a home run for them. You know, as we sit here right now, Ryan Polls has made one of the great trades in the history of the modern NFL, you know, trading the rights to Bryce Young for DJ Moore, Darnell Wright, Caleb Williams, a second round pick next year.
Boy, that is highway robbery. And, you know, Caleb doesn't even need to be great for that to be a great trade. Caleb could just be good and that'll probably suffice. But yeah, they think that they have taken their home run swing with him. You know, three years ago, if you sat them down and said that this was the way things were going to go, not just with Caleb and with the draft, but in their ability to get off the money, you know, they traded Khalil Mack right when Ryan Polls got here. They, you know, let the likes of the Keen Hicks walk. They traded Roquan Smith.
They really did clear their books and they built it back up the right way. And, you know, if the quarterback can go and can get up on his feet pretty quick, he's got a lot of really good teammates. You know, it might be the best position, but number one overall pick has ever walked into in terms of, you know, quality of roster around him. You know, now Caleb's got to get there as fast as he can and, you know, the Bears have to help him along. America will have an opportunity to see him. This is going to be the highest profile game that he's played in, that the country can sit down and watch.
There will be no other games on at that moment. Do you think Caleb Williams is the type of guy to go down in Houston and light it up or is it out of his control because of the whole team? I'm not sure the Bears want to try to race the Texans to 40 points. So that might not be the kind of game that the Bears want him to play.
But, yes, I think he will be a lot better. You know, I talked to Roma Doonze yesterday and, you know, Rome said, listen, you know, this guy's driven. This guy's got Michael Jordan's level drive. And, you know, you can bet that throwing for 93 yards and going 14 for 29 and having a passer rating of 55 something, you can bet that that's going to motivate him this, you know, this week. But, again, look across to T.J. Stroud. T.J. Stroud is the reason that people think Caleb Williams has a chance to be good this year. Before T.J. Stroud, if you were a rookie, you just kind of treaded water and held on tight until you became a second year player.
Stroud broke through, showed that you can, you know, succeed right away. I think that's a really high bar for Caleb to have to clear. I would be surprised if Caleb was as good this year as T.J. Stroud was last year just because it doesn't happen like that. But if Caleb can get close, the Bears, I think, have a better roster around them than the Texans did last year. And then I think the Bears have a chance to at least play meaningful games into December. Well, certainly we're going to see.
I know music to a lot of Bears fans' ears. And last question, Patrick, what's the latest on the football stadium? Are we still looking now at the burbs? It's not downtown anymore.
What are we looking at? Oh, who knows? The Bears still say publicly that they want to build downtown. There's a parking lot just south of Soldier Field that they have their eyes on. And the proposal they've made is that they will kick in two billion dollars with a B of their own money, but that the city's got to provide a whole heck of a lot of money, too, in terms of the roads and streets and ingress and ingress and all the stuff that goes around the stadium. So far, the city's not going for that. The state's not going for that.
And Kevin Warren, who's the Bears' new president, is still pushing it. You know, worst case scenario, they own three hundred and twenty six acres in the suburb of Arlington Heights. They can always go back there. But part of the reason that they're not there right now is the most Chicago of complaints, which is they don't think the property tax bill is fair. They think they're being stuck on property taxes, which if you own a house in Chicago, we all have that feeling. So we'll see. You know, if they can't get it done in the city, I think they will go back to the suburbs.
But I think that it's going to continue trying to give the city the old college try here for another year, a year and a half or so. Patrick Finley has been joining us here from the Chicago Times. Patrick, where can people follow you and your work as you keep up with this ascending team and their former Heisman Award winning quarterback? You can follow me on Twitter at Patrick Finley. One word. Check out the Chicago Times. It's sometimes dot com. And we've got a podcast called Halas Intrigue like George Halas.
You can find out wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Patrick, thank you so much, man. You stay warm as it starts to get cold, OK? Hey, it's 71 right now. We're doing good. Let's just keep it like that. I hear that. Thank you, Patrick. Catch you down the line.
