Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears may be focusing on the upcoming 2024 NFL season in which he will make his league debut, but the former Heisman Trophy winner is also making sure to keep his new teammates in line in the locker room. Recently, Williams reportedly scolded some of his Bears teammates for some of their less than organized habits around the team's facilities.
“First thing he said was, ‘Hey, man, we're all grown men here, right?'” said safety Kevin Byard, per 670 The Score, via Sports Illustrated. “He was like ‘We're getting a little too sloppy. We're leaving water bottles, towels and all types of things around. Custodians have a lot of square footage that they have to cover in this whole building. Let's try to help them out by cleaning up after ourselves.' … When you want to be a great player, you always focus on the little details—not even just the details of the play, but the details of everything around you.”
One person who doesn't think that was such a great idea for a rookie quarterback to do was former New York Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer.
“He's Russell Wilson 2.0. This is not gonna go over well,” said Toomer, via The Carton Show on X, formerly Twitter. “If you came in the locker room, I've been in this locker room for eight years, and some rookie is going to come in, who hasn't played one snap… he's going to come in here and tell me, who's been here, and been through the struggle, that I need to clean up? No, rookie, how about you clean up after me? How about that?”
An interesting dynamic
Williams has already somewhat garnered a reputation for himself as a player who tends to march to the beat of his own drum, including noticing things like the sanitation of locker rooms that other athletes may tend to overlook.
Toomer's Russell Wilson reference would of course refer to the former Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos quarterback's reputation as something of a “diva” to his former teammates, including having his own separate office inside the stadium and giving off a public persona that may not have been exactly in line with the person his teammates knew.
In any case, Williams can quiet down any concerns about his character if he starts producing wins on the football field next month. The Bears season is set to begin on September 8.
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