LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Everything – this story and more about Caleb Williams – should start with the pop. It’s what Williams felt in his right hamstring when he rolled to his left against the Minnesota Vikings and headed toward the end zone.
“That’s why I looked back,” Williams shared on Thursday. “I looked back just like everybody else does when you feel a pop. (You) think somebody grabbed you and nobody grabbed me.”
And then down he went in Week 2 against the Vikings.
Williams needed help off the field and was later carted to the locker room. His placement on the cart itself and the emotions he showed – unfairly – resulted in an incessant amount of ridicule, particularly at the national level.
“I didn’t know it wasn’t going to be season ending,” he said.
Williams would learn the severity of his hamstring injury the following Monday (Sept. 21) after an MRI. “It was a hamstring tear and a pretty serious one,” he said.
As for the grade level of the tear, Williams will keep that to himself.
“Yeah, we got a grade,” Williams said, “but I wouldn’t say it’s deserved to be put out there … after all the false ones.”
It was apparent that Williams was unhappy with how his injury situation had been covered from the start.
“There’s nothing that has come out that has been right about what it is and what it has been,” Williams said as a part of a lengthy opening statement.
“So that’s been fun to deal with.”
The initial coverage only fueled more ridicule of Williams.
He literally became a meme.
“Yeah, I’m always going to show emotion, especially when I can’t be out there with the guys when something like that happens,” he said. “When I went through the draft process, I went to two places and the two places was here and (I) popped over to the Vikings for a visit as we all know. And they asked me what’s the difference between you and everyone else? It’s because I care about the team, about the organization, winning, being out there, my teammates, all of that. So I care – and that’s the biggest thing. This is what I love to do. This puts a smile on my face. It’s everything to me. So not being able to be out there was frustrating. That was more of the tears or whatever that was.
“And then the other half of it was just everybody making jokes and all of that, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s the other half of the national or the local and then putting out false things that weren’t true, to then allow people to go and run with it. So, that’s all right. We’ll be back out here soon and we’ll be ready to roll.”
It wasn’t new territory for Williams. But it was the first time he was dealing with a serious injury in the NFL.
“My character has been attacked … for a while,” he said. “It’s just another motivating factor when I get out there and get going again.”
And that looks soon.
Williams was a full participant in practice on Thursday. But he opened his news conference at Halas Hall by saying that he doesn’t know if he’s playing Sunday against the Falcons in Atlanta.
“(I) have to go through a bunch of medical protocols,” he said. “I obviously have to get out there and practice – do the stress testing that obviously you do when you’re trying to come back from injury or serious injury.”
What’s involved in the stress test?
“It’s data – loading it,” Williams said. “Practice is loading it in many different positions just because you’ve got a (defensive) line rushing you, so you’re putting your body in positions that you can’t really replicate because it’s more of a reaction in practice and game. You’re putting yourself in those positions in practice and that’s a stress test of being able to go through a whole week and see how it goes and then you get to the end of the week, you feel good and medical approves and strength and conditioning approves with my strength and the flexibility and all of that, all that good stuff that they all know, it’s a team working together trying to get it right.”
Everything Williams did at Lambeau Field before the game on Sunday also was a step – maybe quite a few – in the right direction for his return. His daily routine has included five to six hours of rehab work with Bears staff members. After that, he said he uses “a bunch of machines and things like that” to enhance his recovery while at home.
Everything he’s doing is working.
“I can move. I can run,” Williams said. “I hit a top speed the other day, one of my high speeds I’ve ever hit. And so I can move, I can run. I’ve got strength. It’s like I said, just going through the stress test because obviously fibers and things like that in your hamstrings and things like that in your hamstrings and muscles have to connect back together to be able to go out there and play a 60-minute game.”
