<p>The Summer of Caleb Williams is over, ending as abruptly as the weather changed this week when summer itself ended.</p><p>As the hype ballooned for months amid expectations that he’d be an MVP candidate, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears" target="_blank" >Bears</a> coach <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears/2026/09/11/as-engineer-and-artist-blend-styles-bears-ben-johnson-gets-goosebumps-about-future-with-caleb-williams" >Ben Johnson</a> touting all he believed Williams was capable of and appearing on the coveted Madden 27 cover, it was only going to take a bad game or an injury to deflate it. Both happened Sunday as Williams sputtered through a 9-3 loss to the Vikings and left in the fourth quarter with a hamstring injury.</p><p>Williams’ approval rating remains sky high in Chicago, but the national conversation flipped sharply on him. He’s always been a player that people love to hate, and his emotional reaction to the injury reignited that with accusations of being overdramatic.</p><p>Even the Merriam-Webster dictionary took a whack at the video of him fighting through tears to pump his fist to the crowd at Soldier Field as he was carted to the locker room with a post on X that captioned it, “Just spelled ‘conscientious’ correctly on the first try.”</p><p>Williams is clocking all of it without saying a word. He re-posted five items about it on his X account. In an interview with the Sun-Times last season, he said he saves negative items like that for motivation and entertainment and speculated about why he’s been a popular punching bag dating back to USC.</p><p>“I guess I do things differently — dress, play, all these different things, [painting] my nails or whatever,” he said. “I do some things that don’t harm anybody else, but things that other people don’t like and have strong opinions about.</p><p>“It’s all good with me. It’s fun to laugh at because it’s not real, it’s not true, so it’s just… something to joke about. My friends and I get a kick out of it.”</p><p>They mocked him when he cried while hugging his mom after a loss at USC. They made a meal out of him writhing on the bench against the Vikings as a rookie after he’d taken yet another sack and was simply trying to find a comfortable position given his back pain.</p><p>Setting aside the predictable nastiness of social media, Williams has been hearing it from people who actually have a platform.</p><p>Former NFL linebacker Will Compton, co-host of the popular Bussin’ with the Boys podcast, ripped him for leaving on a cart for merely a hamstring injury, drawing a rebuke from ex-Bear Kyle Long. Another former linebacker Emmanuel Acho agreed, saying on his podcast that Williams’ reaction to the injury was over the top unless it was season-ending.</p><p>Acho’s brother, Sam, who played for the Bears a decade ago, criticized Williams’ leadership credentials last year because his socks weren’t pulled all the way up during a preseason game.</p><p>On the other side, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said the Bears would be lost without Williams — “No Caleb Williams, no Chicago Bears relevancy,” he declared — so not everyone is a hater.</p><p>The anti-Williams crowd got more fuel Monday night when Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart suffered what turned out to be a season-ending knee injury, but was still trying to stay in the game.</p><p>The reality is that Williams had no way of knowing how injured he was Sunday. All he knew for sure was something was very wrong in a very essential part of the body for an athlete.</p><p>“Everyone has an opinion of why he reacted a certain way,” Raiders star Maxx Crosby said on his podcast. “I’ve had one hammy thing, and that [stuff] will freak you the [expletive] out when it first happens… He probably imagined something really bad just happened and you have all these emotions.”</p><p>When Johnson spoke vaguely about his recovery and wouldn’t rule him out even for the game Monday against the Eagles, it inadvertently contributed to an assumption that the injury wasn’t that bad. Johnson was only trying to nod to Williams’ resilience.</p><p>“He wants to be out there on the grass going full speed, so it is a little more challenging to hold a guy back like that,” Johnson said Wednesday. “If you could build a player, that's what you'd want him to be like.”</p><p>Really, the Bears still might not know precisely how bad it is or how much time he’ll miss. It’s still possible he’ll be out several games.</p><p>Either way, the cloud he floated into the season on has evaporated. He’s back to being a guy that so many people seem to enjoy watching fail, which he doesn’t like, but can survive.</p><p>Williams has withstood just about everything in his first three NFL seasons, and along the way poked holes in pre-draft narratives that he was selfish, soft, un-coachable and more concerned with fame than being a great player. Every bit of that has turned out to be wrong.</p><p>But, as usual, the only way for him to mute is to get back on the field and get back to winning.</p>
IUSTITIA.BG – Investigations 2009-2026 2026-09-23 20:07:51
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