A complicated quarterback situation has turned into a circus for the Bears as they sort out their near future with starter Caleb Williams, backup Tyson Bagent and third-stringer Case Keenum.
Keenum will start Monday against the Eagles, Fox reported, despite Bagent clearing concussion protocol Sunday. The Bears updated Bagent’s game status from questionable to completely available, he was in meetings late in the week and practiced in full Saturday, but will be Keenum’s backup.
Miller Moss, an undrafted rookie, is expected to be promoted Monday from the practice squad to be the emergency quarterback.
The Bears ruled out Williams on Saturday, an inevitable move that could’ve been done days earlier, but throughout the situation, the reality has been they don’t know when he’ll be back. The possibility of missing a month or so is always on the table for an injury like that.
Some of this mess was avoidable.
The first mistake was coach Ben Johnson initially casting Williams’ hamstring injury as something that might not cost him even one game even though he already knew Williams wouldn’t be able to practice all week. Johnson probably intended it as a salute to Williams’ toughness, but it fueled backlash that Williams had overreacted as he was carted to the locker room at Soldier Field.
The idea of him playing one week after suffering even a low-grade hamstring strain was implausible.
Williams actually has a Grade 2 hamstring strain, NFL Network reported Sunday, which could keep a player out 1-2 months, but the Bears are projecting 3-4 weeks and Williams hopes to beat that timeline.
Given that he’s out Monday and the team doesn’t plan to put him on injured reserve, which would require him to miss a minimum of four games, all of that is a roundabout way of saying he’s week-to-week, which is how Johnson has been describing it.
If the Bears change their minds about putting Williams on IR, they have until Monday at 3 p.m. for the Eagles game to count toward the four.
Williams missing up to four games shouldn’t be the end of the world because they’re approaching a relatively soft spot in the schedule. After hosting the Eagles, they’re home Sunday against the Jets, then visit the Packers on Oct. 11 and Falcons on Oct. 18.
That’s a navigable stretch to go at least 2-2 with a backup quarterback if necessary, especially considering how terrible the Packers have looked, and hope to be .500 or better when Williams is healthy.
That backup should be Bagent, who has decisively been the No. 2 quarterback over Keenum the last two seasons.
If Bagent is cleared to play, he should start. There shouldn’t be legitimate concern about his readiness after coaches said multiple times last week he was in the loop on game planning and he now has gotten a green light from the medical staff.
Johnson was all over the place on Bagent’s status Saturday, perhaps intentionally to maintain some mystery for the Eagles. He errantly said twice before practice that he had cleared concussion protocol, leading to the team issuing a clarification.
He dodged a question about whether he needed to see something from Bagent in practice to make a decision on a starter. He said, “There’s a reason why Tyson was the backup as we ended camp,” and added that since he was in meetings and able to practice, Bagent was “right on track to be where he needs to be” and “in a good spot for what we’re asking him to do.”
Then when asked if he might start Keenum against the Eagles and use Bagent as the backup, he replied, “Sure.”
Keenum, 38, was brought in last year predominantly to mentor Williams and Bagent and has been a huge asset in that regard, but has not thrown a pass in a game since playing for the Texans in 2023 and rarely, if ever, practiced against a first-team defense before stepping in last week.
The Bears have long viewed Bagent as an emerging starter and repeatedly said last offseason he was too valuable to trade away for a draft pick. He got a two-year, $10 million contract extension last year that covers this season and next, and he’s the NFL’s 13th-highest paid backup.
They believed Bagent was an ideal insurance policy for Williams and that losing their starter for any period wouldn’t automatically wreck their season.
The Bears are an underdog Monday — multiple players brought it up the last few days — but playing the better quarterback gives them a better shot. It’d be different if Bagent’s status had been uncertain all the way up to kickoff, but Johnson seemed to consider him an option no later than Saturday. He might’ve been fairly confident in that even earlier, saying Wednesday the Bears didn’t need to bring in an extra quarterback even as an emergency option.
It never needed to become this convoluted publicly. It’s doubtful the Bears actually gained any advantage over the Eagles by dancing around all of this, and the plan for Monday is, at minimum, debatable.