What Drake Maye’s rough Week 1 reminds us about Caleb Williams and the Bears
· Yahoo Sports
Yikes.
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While I did accurately predict the Patriots would play the Seahawks way more competitively than they did in the Super Bowl, I didn’t have them outright blowing their chance at a tone-setting Week 1 win the way they did. Especially not the way they did it.
Because you don’t necessarily expect Drake Maye, the MVP runner-up from last season, to throw the game away with the Patriots knocking on the door of a game-tying field goal with under a minute to play. But that’s what happened.
Maye’s unconscionable interception—his third and final of the contest—was the thing nightmares are made of for a young star quarterback, costing New England the first of its 17 games in the 2026 season. All in all, Wednesday night served arguably the worst season debut Maye could’ve had, especially after a Super Bowl performance that left fans wondering if he was little more than a bum-slayer.
While Maye did make some plays against the vaunted Seahawks defense, every one of his three picks broke New England’s back, particularly because the Seahawks didn’t even have starting quarterback Sam Darnold past the second quarter of this game.
Now, on the one hand, it’s easy to look at Maye’s season-opening dud, which is eerily reminiscent of last year’s poor performance against the Las Vegas Raiders, and say, “See? That clown has nothing on Caleb Williams.”
And you know what? As a Chicago Bears fan, I have no problem making the case that Williams, the No. 1 pick of the 2024 NFL draft and Bears starting quarterback, was the right pick for the Bears last year regardless of anything Maye did last season. Plus, as anyone who watches him knows, Williams has nowhere near the penchant for turnovers that Maye has. Even coming out of college, Maye, while highly talented, possesses a Josh Allen-esque brain worm gene that Williams hasn’t shown symptoms of.
But while it’s tempting to gloat about Maye’s Week 1 stinker, I would actually caution Bears fans to show some restraint.
Because you never know when Williams might have his own game like that.
Progress is not a linear equation. Screwing up like Maye did last night can also help a player get better (provided he doesn’t make the same mistakes again—something Williams is good about). Just because these guys are in Year 3 doesn’t mean they have everything figured out, especially in Week 1. (Though I’d like to point out the number of Bears fans who were highly correct in their Week 1 Year 3 assessments about Mitchell Trubisky and Justin Fields in their “prove-it” years.)
Williams is not in “prove-it” mode in the same way. He’s won a playoff game and delivered more than enough times in moments that mattered to cement himself as “The Guy” for the Bears past this season. Unless he’s absolutely horrid in 2026, he’s going to get that $60 million-a-year contract extension next offseason.
And we should expect him to have taken a step forward by the time his third season wraps.
But there’s probably going to be a week where he struggles. Where he turns the ball over multiple times. Where he struggles to complete more than 50% of his throws. Because even for the best quarterbacks in the league and of all time, season-long perfection is not possible.
When that happens, let’s not act like the world is ending. Criticize where it’s required (especially if Williams throws that stupid of a game-losing pick), and then look for improvement the next week.
Games like yesterday remind us of why Williams, not Maye, went No. 1 overall in 2024 and why he’s likely to be better. But he’ll still stumble from time to time. Let’s just hope it’s not this Week 1—or when the game is on the line.