Chicago Bears QB Caleb Williams receives surprise support from former NFL quarterback

Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears offense spun their wheels for most of Monday night’s 27-24 loss to the Minnesota Vikings. The Bears scored a touchdown on their opening drive of the game, but didn’t score another offensive touchdown until 2:02 remained in the fourth quarter.

Williams and the offense had several chances to knock the Vikings out in the second half after Nahshon Wright’s pick-six of J.J. McCarthy gave Chicago a 17-6 lead in the third quarter. However, a missed field goal by Cairo Santos and several missed throws by Williams killed the team’s momentum.

Kurt Warner defended Chicago Bears QB Caleb Williams

Williams received much of the blame for the loss from local and national media. The second-year quarterback understood he needed to get better before the Bears Week 2 contest against the Detroit Lions.

During an appearance on the Rich Eisen Show this week, former NFL quarterback Kurt Warner defended Williams. Not only did he argue McCarthy didn’t necessarily outplay Williams due to the level of difficulty asked of each quarterback, but he stressed that Williams didn’t get enough help from DJ Moore.

“Let me just first say that kind of mentioned there is that the level of difficulty for JJ McCarthy in this game was way, way lower than the level of difficulty with Caleb’s first start in Chicago on Monday Night Football,” Warner said. “I’m simply talking about the way the game played out. The plays that were called, the throws that they had to make. It was just easier for JJ, you know, with all the things like you said, he didn’t have to do anything till the fourth quarter and still had a chance…

“I thought for Caleb it was, it was hard work all night long… Now I say all that to say I still have questions about Caleb. There were things in the game or things that I saw that, you know, continue to lend themselves to my opinion that he’s got a long way to go in terms of settling down, slowing the game down, playing at the pace that he needs to play, you know, seeing things and slowing the mental processes down.”

Hall of Fame QB Kurt Warner on the Rich Eisen show:

“I thought the level of difficulty for JJ was way lower than the level of difficulty for Caleb.”

“I thought Caleb played a really good game.”

All is not lost Chicago. #DaBears #Bears #ChicagoBears pic.twitter.com/81YKExD2jm

— Clay Harbor (@clayharbs82) September 11, 2025

Warner thought Williams did a nice job of going through progressions against defensive coordinator Brian Flores’ scheme. Williams was hitting his third or fourth receiver. Still, he needs to become more comfortable in new head coach Ben Johnson’s scheme.

That should come with time, and hopefully the Bears offense looks better against a Detroit Lions defense that let Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers beat them up in Week 1.

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