For a second there, I was worried the Bears were finally getting it together.

On the surface, it sure looked like it: the Ben Johnson hire was a slam dunk, the offensive line upgrades made sense, and their draft class – on paper, at least – looks like one of the league’s best this year. It’s all been so sickening.

The sweet, sweet regression hit hard on Thursday, thanks to a bombshell (BOMBSHELL!!) report from ESPN’s Seth Wickersham about Caleb Williams and his complete disinterest in playing for the Bears. Every line is better than the rest.

Caleb Williams didn’t want to play for the Bears, and who can blame him?

“Quarterback Caleb Williams was so concerned about being picked by the Chicago Bears in 2024 that he and his family weighed blowing up the entire NFL draft, consulting with lawyers to figure out a way around the league’s collective bargaining agreement while considering signing with the United Football League, details from a forthcoming book reveal …

Carl Williams went to great lengths to try to circumvent the NFL draft, Wickersham writes, wanting to give his son an opportunity to choose his future employer …

But Caleb was concerned that if they did try and the Bears refused to trade him, it would make a tough situation worse.

In the end, Caleb Williams told Wickersham, “I wasn’t ready to nuke the city.”

This is usually where I dive deep into the snark, but right now I just feel sympathetic – can you blame him?

I wouldn’t want to play for the Bears either. Chicago *is* where QBs go to die, although I’d argue that it’d take QBs going there first for that to be totally true. Who could have seen this coming, asks the team that willingly hired Matt Eberflus and then kept him around for multiple seasons.

You know your organizational reputation is in a great place when your franchise QB’s dad consults constitutional lawyers as an exit strategy.

What a storied place to play!

The only thing funnier than this story is the panic it injected into Bears Twitter this week. Now they’re all loudly freaking out about a QB problem they didn’t even realize they had. All is right again.