Caleb Williams was going to score a touchdown. Anyone watching from home, or inside of a thoroughly drenched Soldier Field, knew it was about to happen. The Chicago Bears were trailing Minnesota by an ugly score of 6-3 in the fourth quarter when Williams, boxed in all game by the Vikings’ defense, faked an outside zone handoff to running back Kyle Monangai and booted out to his left. The Vikings bit, and Williams found himself with a relatively easy scamper to the end zone ahead of him when he was suddenly and out of nowhere struck him down on the sodden turf:
🚨 Caleb Williams (leg) helped off field with trainers.
— NFL Daily News (@insidenflnews.bsky.social) 2026-09-20T19:36:45.857Z
As of this writing, Williams is reported to have suffered a hamstring injury. If that’s the case, it appears to be pretty bad. Not only was Williams screaming in agony for an extended period after going down, he was seen crying hard tears on his cart ride back to the locker room. Those were not, "aw gee I’m gonna miss a couple of games" tears. Those were "Fuck my season might be over," tears. Awful. Shitty. Unfair.
It’s a horribly sad turn of events for a team that, after decades of futility, finally seemed on the verge of a real breakthrough. This team came back from being down 21-3 at halftime to beat Green Bay in the playoffs a year ago. For an encore in Week 1 of this season, Williams and the Bears offense hung an unfathomable 59 points on the Panthers in Charlotte. The Bears didn’t just look good, they looked scary. Like a team that knew it could fuck you up.
But this afternoon, the Bears were unable to reach the end zone against Minnesota at all, even when they had multiple chances from point blank range. Running back D'Andre Swift lost a fumble at the Minnesota one-yard line to start off the third quarter. And when backup quarterback Tyson Bagent took over for Williams in the fourth on second-and-goal from Minnesota’s 6-yard line, he was unable to muster anything more than a single additional yard. A subsequent Cairo Santos field goal attempt on fourth down to tie the game was blocked by Vikings corner Isaiah Rodgers. After that, the Vikings drove for a third field goal to essentially ice the game (though not without making their fans sweat it out a little, as per custom), and that was that.
The Vikings go to 2-0 and hope to get their starting quarterback, Kyler Murray, back a week from now. Meanwhile, all of Chicago has to wait for news on Williams that it knows is coming, but can’t bear to hear.
