After his second straight comeback win against the Green Bay Packers, Caleb Williams is turning into a figure few living Bears fans have seen: a franchise quarterback, a player who’s the face of the team. The Bears haven’t had a figure like that since the 1940s, when Sid Luckman led the team to four NFL championships. And back then, football was far behind baseball in popularity. To this day, Luckman is the only Hall of Fame quarterback who is principally associated with the Bears.

Since then, the list of Bears QBs has been a parade of mediocrity, featuring such forgettable names as Bobby Douglas, Ed Brown, Erik Kramer, Cade McNown, and Kyle Orton. I just finished typing that sentence and I’ve already forgotten them. Even during the Bears’ Super Bowl seasons, in 1985 and 2006, the quarterbacks were the interchangeable Jim McMahon and Rex Grossman. Just about anyone could have won with those defenses, and just about anyone did.

Statistically, the Bears’ “greatest” quarterback was…Jay Cutler. In his career, Cutler passed for 23,443 yards. As a franchise-leading quarterback, that figure is 30th out of 32 teams, ahead of only the expansion Houston Texans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Williams is the first Bear ever to pass for 4,000 yards in a season, a feat previously accomplished by every other team in the NFL. Our enemies to the north, the Green Bay Packers, have enjoyed great stability at quarterback, moving smoothly from Hall of Famer Brett Favre, future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers, and question mark Jordan Love. In that same period, the Bears started 39 players at quarterback.

 The Bears once had a chance at an all-time great QB, but they lost the coin flip for the first spot in the 1970 NFL draft to the Pittsburgh Steelers, who chose Terry Bradshaw. In later drafts, the Bears passed up Joe Montana, and, in 2017, Patrick Mahomes, when they took Mitchell Trubisky with the No. 2 pick. Mahomes has won three Super Bowls. Trubisky lasted four years in Chicago and is now a backup quarterback for the Buffalo Bills.

In 2020, ESPN investigated the Bears’ quarterbacking troubles and found that they have been, statistically, the worst team in the NFL at that position.

According to ESPN.com’s own Quarterback Index, the Bears rank last in the Super Bowl era in terms of QB production (48.3 out of a 100 point scale). During that time, the Bears have started a total of 50 quarterbacks, per ESPN Stats & Information research, the most of any NFL team in that span.

The highest NFL passer rating for a Chicago quarterback over that span (minimum five appearances) belongs to Josh McCown, who played in just 11 games for the Bears from 2011 to ’13. The lowest-rated passer during that time was Henry Burris, who appeared in six games for the Bears in 2002, starting only once and posting a 28.2 passer rating.

So what does it mean that the Bears may finally have a superstar quarterback, a player who defines the team the way Joe Namath did the Jets, Joe Montana the 49ers, and Tom Brady the Patriots? First of all, Williams has got everybody in town talking football, more than at any time since 1985. On Sunday, I would guess that millions of encounters began with some variation of “How ’bout that game last night?” It also means that the Bears have a chance to transcend Chicago in football fandom. As much as we love them here, and despite their importance in NFL history, the Bears have never had a national following, like the Steelers or the Cowboys. This season, Williams’s jersey ranked fifth in national sales. In the ’00s, a lot of Bears fans were wearing Brian Urlacher jerseys. He was a linebacker, a position that has traditionally been much stronger for the Bears than quarterback (see also Dick Butkus and Mike Singletary), but doesn’t excite fans as much as the pinpoint passer Williams has become. Williams has a chance to become Chicago’s most dominant athlete since Michael Jordan. It also helps that, in interviews, he goes beyond platitudes to analyze his performance.

Of course, to rise into that company, Williams has to do the Super Bowl Shuffle. At 24, he’s got plenty of time for that. If the Bears win this season, Williams will be the second-youngest Super Bowl winning quarterback in history, after only Ben Roethlisberger in XL. Right now, he’s merely a great Bears quarterback — which isn’t a high bar, given the team’s history at the position. He appears to have Hall of Fame talent, but it’s way too early to predict whether he’ll be a Hall of Famer. Right now, he’s merely the quarterback Bears fans have been waiting generations to see.

However the playoffs turn out, with Caleb Williams, the Bears seem to have finally solved their quarterback issues, after only 80 years of trying.