For Caleb Williams and other top prospects, appearances are everything at the NFL Combine

This Bears’ evaluation of Caleb Williams and other top prospects at the NFL Combine was always going to be more about what happens in the shadows than on the field.

In the span of about 48 hours, the NFL Combine got a whole lot less interesting to a lot of football fans in a hurry.

Shortly after news leaked that Caleb Williams wouldn’t throw or participate in Combine drills, fellow top quarterback Jayden Daniels and top wide receivers Marvin Harrison Jr. and Malik Nabers followed suit, skipping on-field workouts and testing.

Not long after, we learned Drake Maye, another potential top-5 pick, wouldn’t throw at the Combine either.

All will be in Indianapolis for medicals and team interviews but little else. In fact, Harrison reportedly won’t test at all before the draft, preferring to prepare for the NFL season rather than risk injury in relatively meaningless drills.

Is it disappointing? Sure.

Does it matter in the long run? Not at all.

When people in the football say “your tape is your résumé,” that’s not just a cliche. Running fast or jumping high in shorts doesn’t mean you’re going to do those things against NFL competition at a high level (*stares in Kevin White*). And when you’re one of the best players at your position, what do you truly have to gain from participating in drills?

The off-the-field stuff, however, is where the real money is made.

While the 15-20-minute interviews the Bears will have with prospects at the NFL Combine aren’t necessarily the only time the team will spend with those players, it serves as a first impression. Those first glimpses can, in some cases, make or break a prospect’s chances with a team.

Which brings us to the most important player the Bears will meet with this week: one Caleb Williams.

Nothing Williams did throwing the football or testing athletically would (or should) have mattered to his evaluation as a potential quarterback for the Bears.

We all know he’s a little shorter than you’d like (though he’s not small) and doesn’t run a 4.4 40. But we also know he’s a special playmaker who can throw the hell out of the football.

This was always going to be about how he interviewed with the Bears and what they thought of him as a person.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus have been stringent about the kind of player they typically value on their team. When the Bears say they need to be “blown away” by a quarterback in order to draft them, that part matters, too. They’ve talked about the importance of “the person” enough to where it might not be enough for Williams to be simply “ok” in that department while being exciting on the field.

Nothing I’ve heard suggests Williams is a bad person or a locker-room cancer. But can he convince Poles he’s a special person and leader? That’s the real question.

People will point first to Poles’ comments about some of the USC star’s “similar” traits to Patrick Mahomes as a passer as evidence the Bears will definitely select him in the draft. After all, Poles scouted Mahomes and knows exactly what those similarities are.

But the next part of the equation — where Poles and others talk about how remarkable they found Patrick Mahomes the person — is going to matter a lot to the Bears. It certainly mattered in why Matt Nagy (also of the Chiefs team who drafted Mahomes) campaigned so hard for Justin Fields and why Poles, whatever he decides to do with Fields, speaks so highly of the Bears’ incumbent starter.

We’ve seen extremely talented players fail before because, quite simply, they didn’t have that dawg in ‘em. The key for the Bears today and for however long it takes to make this decision will be to ensure Williams (or whomever they might be looking at in a quarterback) does.

That’s something you can’t find out in a workout in shorts. (Usually, anyway.) And it might not necessarily be something you know for sure after one brief interview. But given that’s all the Bears will have with Williams this week, those 20-odd minutes could be some of the biggest in franchise history.