The NFL Draft is a wild time for prospects. You're playing your final college season, hoping to put up enough game film to be considered a top prospect, or at least be selected in the draft.
While trying to balance all of that, players who are considered to be at the top of the class are likely looking to see how the NFL season is playing out. The NFL doesn't utilize a draft lottery system, so the first round defaults to an inverse of the final league standings. This means that the worst teams end up with the better draft picks. Athletes have to watch NFL teams struggle and try to get excited about playing for the current worst of the worst when they finally realize their dreams.
In the vast majority of years, this doesn't end up mattering, and players go where they are drafted. Still, in NFL history there have been some instances where players infamously refused to play for certain teams.
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John Elway and Eli Manning come to mind, but we nearly had a third quarterback join the infamous list. Here is more on how Caleb Williams' father kept his son from joining the Bears.
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Who is Caleb Williams' father?
Williams' father is named Carl. While Caleb focused on winning the Heisman trophy in his first year at USC after transferring, his father had entered the limelight, talking with the media. He spoke on Caleb's leaving Oklahoma and the controversial following head coach Lincoln Riley. Carl was at the focal point of the NFL draft conversation when it became apparent that the Bears would be on the clock with the No. 1 overall pick thanks to owning the last place Panthers' first round pick.
How did Caleb Williams' father almost prevent the QB from going to Chicago?
Parents want the best for their kids, so you can see where Carl was coming from. He had watched the Bears fail to develop a quarterback and waste multiple high draft picks on players like Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields. Carl became very outspoken with what he wanted to happen for the start of his son's pro career, and he didn't want it to be in Chicago.
ESPN's Seth Wickersham is releasing a book soon titled, "American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback." In this book, Wickersham is going to talk about what it is like being a quarterback in 2025. He talks to veteran quarterback Kirk Cousins, recent rookies Williams and Maye and college quarterback Arch Manning.
Wickersham spoke with both Caleb and Carl about his pre-draft process. Carl was outspoken with his opinion of the Bears, saying, "Chicago is the place quarterbacks go to die." The elder Williams also said before the NFL Draft, "I don't want my son playing for the Bears," to several agents.
Carl spoke to Archie Manning, who helped his son Eli have some control over where he landed in his NFL Draft. Archie and Eli were very vocal about the quarterback's refusal to play for the Chargers, who had the No. 1 overall pick. Manning was selected by the franchise, but traded to the Giants 45 minutes later.
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Carl also met with lawyers to determine if there was a way that they could undermine the current collective bargaining agreement, or even opt out of the NFL Draft, spend a season in the UFL and then sign as an unrestricted free agent in 2025. Carl told Wickersham that part of the problem with the CBA is that he thinks the rookie contract structure is "unconstitutional."
After meeting with Minnesota head coach Kevin O'Connell at the 2024 NFL Combine, Caleb told his father he wanted to go to Minnesota. Chicago said that they were drafting Caleb no matter what, and this led to Carl being ready to slander the city of Chicago so much that they didn't want anything to do with Caleb. The younger Williams ended up nixing the plan, saying, "I wasn't ready to nuke the city."
Williams ended up landing in Chicago and now gets to head into Year 2 with former Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson as his new head coach. It will be interesting to see what fallout, if any, Williams now gets with all of this information coming out in the book to the public.