>Williams struggled to execute elementary tasks. Every day was a new disaster.
>That early, that spring, the Bears changed the snap count to appease Williams. Instead of using a combination of colors and numbers like every other team in the NFL, the Bears reverted to a “Ready, set, go!” straight out of JV football because that’s what the quarterback requested. Aside from the obvious on-field consequences — defenders could tee off — the Bears were establishing a troubling precedent in allowing a rookie to tell them exactly what to do. Veterans couldn’t believe it. “Are you shitting me?” one receiver asked a coach.
>When a play call was sent in, he’d stare at this wristband for a painful length of time. “Like it was in another language,” another coach says. Williams verbalized the call in the huddle, it was wrong half the time, and then players would be lined up wrong all over the field. Verbiage was truncated. Huddling was minimized. The playbook, dumbed down. The Bears offense devolved into an exercise of trial and error to fit whatever the USC rookie demanded.
