It is official. Caleb Williams, the No. 1 pick out of USC and the most acclaimed rookie quarterback in Chicago Bears history, has signed his first contract with the organization.
After signing a waiver to take part in Organized Team Activities (OTAs) and mini-camp, Williams and the Bears finally put pen to paper and signed on the dotted line to finalize his deal with the team on Tuesday as training camp for the rookies opened. According to ESPN’s senior NFL insider Adam Schefter’s original report, the contract is worth an estimated $39 million over four years. That number is fully guaranteed and includes a $25.5 million signing bonus. The Bears will retain the right to pick up a fifth-year option on the deal.
Spotrac has broken the details down even more. The total value of the contract is $39.48 million. Williams will have a $7.1 million cap hit in 2024. This rookie deal makes him the 22nd highest average paid quarterback in the NFL. The cap hit will go up roughly $1.8 million each year until the team’s fifth year option.
The Bears now have their quarterback in place under the much-discussed team-friendly rookie contract. The team is off to a good start and will look to improve upon building a championship contender with the financial flexibility this allows them. If Williams is able to lead the team back to the promise land, a place that they have not been since 1985, there is no doubt his next deal will be astronomically expensive for the Bears.
Embed from Getty ImagesWilliams, who is considered a lone wolf, who is not represented by an NFLPA-certified agent, had expressed confidence that the team around him would handle his negotiations while he gets ready and prepares for his first preseason.
“I’m not handling that,” Williams told The Chicago Tribune during his inaugural Caleb Cares Foundation event in the ‘Windy City’, Chicago last Saturday. “My lawyers and attorney and everybody, the head of the Bears, everybody up there up top is handling that. That’s not my position that I’m handling.”
The Bears drafted Williams number one overall in the 2024 NFL Draft. The pick originally belonged to the Carolina Panthers, who finished with the worst record in the NFL in 2023 to earn the pick, before handing it off to the Bears.
The Bears obtained the rights to the pick used to select Williams in their 2023 offseason trade with Carolina, a trade which sent the Bears’ number one overall pick last year to the Panthers, which was used by the them to select QB Bryce Young out of the University of Alabama. In exchange, the Bears received: WR DJ Moore, Carolina’s number nine overall pick in 2023 (used by the Bears to select OT Darnell Wright after trading back to number 10 with the Philadelphia Eagles in exchange for a fourth-round pick in 2024, a pick that became P Tory Taylor), the number 61 pick in the 2023 draft (used by the Bears to select CB Tyrique Stevenson at number 56 after trading up with the Jacksonville Jaguars in exchange for a fifth-round pick last year), this year’s first-round pick (QB Caleb Williams), and a yet to be determined second-round pick in 2025.
Earlier Tuesday, fellow first-rounder Rome Odunze out of the University of Washington, also signed his first contract with the Bears, which is a four-year contract worth $22.7 million and it also contains a $13.3 million signing bonus. Odunze’s contract is also are fully guaranteed and contain a fifth-year option in 2028.
