Bears rookie punter trolls Caleb Williams for post-draft message after offensive debut in preseason game

There seems to be a sort of cheeky rivalry between two members of the Chicago Bears 2024 draft class. Of course, the crown jewel of that group was quarterback Caleb Williams, who was selected No. 1 overall. The selection was no surprise as Williams has been one of the first to hear his name called for the past few years. However, it was much more shocking to see Iowa punter Torii Taylor go off the board in the fourth round.

What was surprising wasn’t just that the Bears took a punter so high on Day 3, but that it turned out Williams had already sent them a message about the selection, which immediately went viral.

“Hey, you won’t bet much this year,” Williams wrote to Taylor in a text after he was drafted,

Well, it seems Taylor remembered that initial conversation with his new quarterback and made sure to talk about it during Chicago’s Week 2 preseason matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals. There, the Bears started the game with three straight punts with Williams under center, which led to HBO’s “Hard Knocks” cameras catching Taylor mocking Williams on the sideline for the starting job.

“I thought you said no more, like no punts,” Taylor said. “We had three punts in the first quarter, man.”

“Tell me about it,” Williams replied.

Williams added, “This is just preseason,” and then joked: “We want you to work at the stadium.”

Williams was able to lead the Bears’ offense to two scoring drives after a flurry of punts by Taylor, and Chicago won 27-3 in the exhibition. So, the rookie punter didn’t get as much work the rest of the game as he did coming out of the gate. Although the Bears invested a lot in bringing Taylor in, they feel he’s pretty much their new quarterback and hope they won’t need to use him much once the regular season begins.