Will OL waste Williams rookie season?

I think it's well known here that I'm not a fan of making excuses for failing QBs like we did here for so long with Mitch and JF1.

But CW has barely started his pro career and his OL has been atrocious both games so far.  There's no way to blame him for anything thus far except maybe missing that sideline throw to KA in week 1. 

Even with that, he has thrown two TD passes that were flat dropped by Allen and Odunze respectively.  Allen didn't play week 2, cuz he's constantly been hurt his whole career, and Odunze is off to a slow start with running the wrong route week 2 and having a bum knee.

Gerald Everett and Swift have both sucked thus far too.  Both have whiffed key blocks and both seem to fall down whenever a defender brushes their uniform.  Haven't been impressed with the lack of contact balance by either of them.  Haven't seen either of them shake or break a tackle so far. 

In short, right now Williams is getting zero help from his surrounding cast on offense.  ZERO

+1,000 to that one, Ric.

Talk is cheap.  What a GM actually does, carries more weight.  The Bears have invested in RT with Wright.  Other than that it has been pretty much weak sauce.  We've signed some deadbeats that other teams didn't value enough to keep.  Poles did spend a 3rd round pick on the injured guy, Kiran Amegadjie, who has not played since October of 2023 (for Yale).  And he signed the guy from the Canadian college, the UBC Thunderbirds who (I think) is still hanging on as a practice squad guy. Yes, he brought in Shelton and Bates.  But if you look into those two guys' careers, they are not very good.  Bates was a bench warmer who got 35 snaps last year... why on earth we needed another guy like that here, I can't fathom.  Shelton has (at best) been a mediocre guy who his team did not value enough to keep... these are guys that davidl calls "lost dogs" and that's a good name for them.  Why on earth would we want these guys?  

CW says he is a little bruised up. Yeah.... I bet he is


www.nfl.com/news/bears-qb-caleb-williams-a-little-bruised-up-after-seven-sack-night-vs-texans

My best guess is that Poles feels confident (over-confident?) in his OL evals as a former OL-man himself.  Every GM has to make hard choices as no one can "invest heavily" at every position group.  My guess is that Poles thought he could cut a few corners investment-wise on the iOL as he believed in his evaluations (perhaps too much).  He bragged just last month about having "so much depth" on the OL.  The guy has been overtly proud of what he's done there.

This is probably Poles' biggest crisis as GM thus far.  People understood and forgave him for the last 2 crappy years and the Claypool debacle.  But you're right -- its year 3 and excuse time is about over.  Even Ryan said "its time to win" last month.  

There will be no quick forgiveness if the OL continues to be so shoddy that it wrecks Williams and the impressive weapons has has put together.  He's under the gun this year to show real progress team-wise and QB-wise.  I'll bet things are pretty damn tense in that fancy office of his right now.  I bet there's some really bad words flying back and forth in meetings.

Like I said, Poles passed on Stroud to draft Williams a year later.  He also passed on Harbaugh (and Kubiak and maybe Fangio too) in order to stick with Flus.  He's gotta make this work or he's cooked.