The seemingly never-ending saga of what the Chicago Bears will do with the first overall pick keeps trucking along.
One idea is for the Bears to use their first overall pick in the upcoming 2024 NFL draft on USC quarterback Caleb Williams and also keep current starting quarterback Justin Fields for the last year of his rookie contract.
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This would allow Williams to serve as back-up to Fields initially which has successfully been done previously with quarterbacks like Jordan Love and Patrick Mahomes.
Former Bears scout Josh Lucas is warning against this.
“Justin wasn’t great his rookie year,” Josh Lucas told Bill Zimmerman who hosts a Chicago Bears podcast. “We thought having two veterans with him would really help him with Andy [Dalton] and Nick [Foles]. And that was not cohesive at all. The part I kind of liked about it was Justin knew he was the best and should be out there. But the part you don’t like about it is there’s a teachable moment in every point of practice. There are teachable moments in the building every day, how you carry yourself as a quarterback. There are teachable moments at press conferences. There are teachable moments every snap on Sunday.
“And when you’ve got two guys who have won as much as Nick and seen as much as Andy, and you don’t take that information in, because you’re a little standoff-ish and a little abrasive, you’re wasting that opportunity. It would be risky from a team-dynamic standpoint. But if you think it out, let Caleb sit for a year while you’re still continuing to build your team, and you get another year of Justin on a cheap deal, it’s not the craziest thing.”
While it may seem like a good idea to have Williams sit behind Fields for a year, it should be noted that instances like Mahomes with Alex Smith and Jordan Love with Aaron Rodgers is very different as Rodgers and Smith were both well-established veteran quarterbacks in the NFL.
Simply put, don’t expect the Bears to be drafting Williams and keeping Fields.
