CALEB WILLIAMS IS AN NFL RENAISSANCE MAN

The Chicago Bears quarterback and last year's top draft pick has a creative mind and aspirations to build a business empire. He also plans to win Super Bowls.

- Brian O'Keefe

CALEB WILLIAMS, THE NUMBER-ONE PICK in last year’s NFL draft, has almost blocked out the trauma of his rookie season. The Chicago Bears—the team for which he is the starting quarterback—finished at the very bottom of their division. After a promising 4-2 start, they lost ten games in a row. The head coach, Matt Eberflus, got fired in late November, the first time the Bears franchise had ever canned a coach mid-season. And Williams spent much of the year running for his life on the field: He was sacked a league-leading sixty-eight times.

For an athlete who'd carried the nickname “Superman” since high school, it was a cold dose of reality.

Nearly two months after the final snap, Williams still has trouble computing how much losing he had to endure. “I'll be honest with you,” he tells me, “I’ve never lost this much. I lost ten games in one season. I think maybe eleven.”

He pauses and recalculates, a hint of incredulity in his voice. “It’s actually more than eleven.”

I confirm that, yes, his team’s record was an ugly 5-12. Williams can be forgiven for experiencing a little dissociative amnesia. To make all that losing even worse, people had expected more from Williams and the Bears—a lot more. Unlike most top picks in the draft, who typically step into the worst team in the league, Williams joined a roster that seemed poised to win. The Bears had acquired their number-one pick in a canny trade; they were stacked with veterans, with a solid defense and weapons at wide receiver. HBO even documented their preseason in its show Hard Knocks. Fans were dreaming of a playoff berth. Instead, things fell apart.

Around his teammates, Williams tried to conceal his frustration. But his emotions spilled out in private after a couple of the late-season losses. “When I got home, I got in my bed. I just dropped a few tears,” Williams admits. “And I was just so beat-up mentally, physically, spiritually.”