Caleb Williams is carrying an unimaginable burden, and it’s not just the matter of being the last living quarterback in the NFL, or easing into his place as the best Chicago Bears quarterback in three quarters of a century while running the most prolific Bears offense in 50 years. It’s been only eight weeks since his season began, and already he is the preeminent face of Chicago sports. This looks like high praise, but while that praise would be deserved where Williams is concerned, consider the context.
Williams is not working against a deep field—not in the NFC North, which is the toughest division in the league, but in the town in which he works. There, his opposition is Northwestern’s football team, which is 6-2 but unranked and unlikely to break through the upper crust of the Big Ten. The Cubs were routed from the postseason in the shortest possible amount of time, and the White Sox are still striking out despite their season having ended four weeks ago. The Sky are notable only for having turned Angel Reese into a useful player by trading her to another team. And the Bulls and Blackhawks are demonstrably god-awful, well within the margin for error for having a spectacular margin for errors. You know, like the post-election Republican mood.
How god-awful, you ask, since you’ve been averting your eyes? The Bulls are 1-7, and are losing their games by an average of 18 points per game, which ranks as the largest margin of stinkage in NBA history, albeit in this admittedly minuscule sample; they are allowing the second-highest number of points per game ever. They will doubtless revert to a gentler if still depressing mean, as all non-expansion teams tend to do, but with a starting lineup of Caleb Wilson, Norman Powell, Josh Giddey, Matas Buzelis, and Jalen Smith, it would be foolish to rule out the 11-71 outcome for their season.