CHICAGO – The regular-season debut of Chicago Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams is now behind him, which is sweet news for each Williams and the Bears.

There’s no denying that Williams — the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft in April — struggled in Sunday’s 24-17 season-opening victory over the Tennessee Titans at Soldier Field. He rushed his throws. He missed open receivers. He made poor decisions attempting to extend plays.

Yes. Not good.

But one start in a profession doesn’t make a profession. Williams gets a second probability to make a greater impression on Sunday when the Houston Texans host the Bears at NRG Stadium.

For any highly regarded rookie, Texans quarterback CJ Stroud is an amazing role model.

Stroud, chosen second overall in the 2023 draft, is widely considered the fastest-rising quarterback in the game. After leading the Texans to the AFC South title and a wild-card playoff victory over the Cleveland Browns last season, Stroud was named the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year.

The alternative was obvious.

Now the Texans, who opened the season with a 29-27 road win over the Indianapolis Colts, are considered to have one of the league’s strongest rosters. Stroud is at the top of his game, and the Bears are hoping Williams can show improvement in his first road test against a top-tier team.

While Bears coach Matt Eberflus acknowledges Williams needs to enhance, he is just not concerned that Williams will lack the grit to bounce back from a poor first game.

“I don’t think there was any concern. He was calm, composed and collected the whole time. He was never frustrated,” Eberflus said after the Bears rallied from a 17-point second-quarter deficit.

“We always talk to him about the reaction you have, just hanging in there because sometimes it can be tough on both sides. You just have to hang in there. You have to have that faith … faith in the guy next to you, faith in your teammates. It’s not just about one guy.”

But in the future, quarterbacks play a disproportionately large role in a team’s performance, which is why the Bears used the first pick in the draft to pick the 2022 Heisman Trophy winner from USC.

It can be unwise for the Bears to feel guilty after only one game. But Williams, well, has plenty of room to grow.

Williams accomplished just 14 passes on 29 attempts for 93 yards — a median of a paltry 3.2 yards per attempt — and no touchdowns. On a positive note for Williams, he didn’t throw a single interception.

Williams, clearly disenchanted together with his performance after the match, nonetheless believes he’s near regaining his form.

“It’s the little things that always lead to the big things, make those moments and things like that that much bigger, make those games that much closer,” Williams said. “Just the little things.”

In the Texans’ victory over the Colts, Stroud excelled in ways big and small.

The former Ohio State star accomplished 24 of 32 passes for 234 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions. With 11 wins over his last 18 games, Houston has matched its record from the previous three regular seasons combined, spread over 50 games.

In an effort to bolster the receiving corps to maximise the talents of their star quarterback, the Texans acquired All-Pro wideout Stefon Diggs from the Buffalo Bills in April. Diggs caught each of Stroud’s touchdown passes against the Colts.

In his rookie season, Stroud showed a poise that went beyond his experience. While the Texans were impressed by his talent, they were much more pleased with Stroud’s determination to guide and set a positive example since joining the franchise. To say the Texans feel they made an amazing alternative in choosing Stroud can be an enormous understatement.

Before the draft, renowned quarterbacks coach Quincy Avery expressed confidence that the team that drafted Stroud can be very blissful. Judging by the Texans’ response to Stroud, Avery has a crystal ball.

“CJ is just so diligent in his work ethic,” Avery, who has known Stroud since the quarterback was 17, told Andscape.

“There are only a few individuals who work as hard as C.J., and you would really see that when he was 17. When he got here in (to the quarterback camp where Avery was an instructor), no person really looked at him as someone who thought, ‘Oh, man, this guy is going to be super-special.’ He got here right into a situation where we (the camp coaches) were all like, ‘He could be OK.’ And then he totally dominated.

“And every quarterback was there. Guys you see playing in the league now. At Ohio State, C.J. did the same thing. He just kept attacking. Now that he’s in the NFL, he just kept doing it. When someone prepares as hard as C.J. does, is as diligent in his work ethic, you see the fruits of that work.”

For the Texans, Stroud’s work has helped drive much of their recent success, and the Bears are counting on Williams to do the same.

The MetLife Foundation announced a partnership with Toyota HBCUNY Classic on Sept. 12. As a part of MetLife’s commitment to supporting HBCU students, the brand new sponsorship is a step in an ongoing initiative to strengthen inclusive economic mobility for underserved and marginalized communities all over the world.

The September 14 HBCUNY event will concentrate on the highly anticipated football game between Howard University and Morehouse College at MetLife Stadium, which can kick off HBCU homecoming week. The game will feature rousing performances by drummers, in addition to a battle of the bands between the colleges at halftime.

HBCUNY Classic is a multi-day event dedicated to celebrating Black culture and the Historically Black College and University community.

Beyond this event, the MetLife Foundation has donated greater than $1 billion to the communities it serves and continues to construct on its fame for supporting economic mobility by providing access to education for 1000’s of HBCU students.

MetLife Chief Marketing Officer Michael Roberts he said in a press release: “MetLife’s sponsorship of the Toyota HBCUNY Classic presented by Walmart is a testament to its long history of supporting HBCUs through organizations like UNCCF. We are proud that MetLife had the vision to support HBCUs nearly eight decades ago, and we remain committed to building a more confident future through access to a high-quality education.”

Albert Williams, president and CEO of Classic producers Sports Eleven05 LLC, expressed his gratitude. “We thank MetLife for its continued support of the Toyota HBCUNY Classic, the world’s largest HBCU homecoming, held at MetLife Stadium. We deeply appreciate MetLife’s partnership in lifting up our students and supporting HBCUs,” he said.

During CNBC’s live football game, MetLife has scheduled a segment to air through the broadcast to highlight its ongoing commitment to the cause. The segment will highlight the organization’s 78-year partnership with UNCF and have Warren Williams, regional director at UNCF, and Reginald Goins, a former UNCF scholar and graduate of two HBCUs. The film will showcase the undeniable importance of supporting HBCU students who will give you the chance to make an impact of their communities in the long run.

In addition to MetLife’s sponsorship of the HBCUNY Game, the Foundation recently awarded a combined $2.5 million to several different HBCU-related initiatives, including the MetLife Foundation Legacy Endowed Scholarship at UNCF, which provides annual need-based scholarships to college students who attend HBCUs and are majoring in STEM, business, or financial accounting.

In the second week of my seek for the primary black coach to win a national championship in college football, I used to be caught off guard by a surprising message from Thomas Hammock of Northern Illinois University.

NIU defeat Fifth-ranked Notre Dame, coached by Marcus Freeman, certainly one of the few black coaches at schools with the resources, schedule and conference affiliations to usually compete for a national title. Michigan’s Sherrone Moore and Penn State’s James Franklin also make the list. Black coaches at UCLA, Purdue and Maryland all have a possible path, in some unspecified time in the future, to winning the newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. And you never know what might occur in the longer term with Deion Sanders coaching at Colorado (for now).

But Hammock? In the Mid-American Conference? Who a few years ago thought he’d never get a likelihood to be a head coach?

Northern Illinois still has a slim likelihood of creating the playoffs, let alone winning all of it. But no matter where the Huskies find yourself, Hammock made a huge statement about equal opportunity, and his uninhibited tears after defeating the Irish in South Bend, Indiana, showed that college football still has heart and a higher purpose amongst all greed AND destroyed traditions.

Tracing the “first black” people could be tiresome—some would argue that President Barack Obama has rendered the topic moot—but I believe we’d like to proceed to look at the arenas where black people have been denied equal opportunity to succeed. Only 16 of 134 trainers in the very best league of faculty football there are black people, while greater than half of the players are black.

The indisputable fact that no black coach has won a national championship in college football means various things to different people. I asked Hammock: What does that mean to you?

“As a player, it motivates me,” he said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “It should motivate all the black coaches who have the opportunity (to be starters). It’s something we should strive for.”

Some black coaches simply want to educate without the added burden or pressure of being liable for the progress of black people normally. That in itself is a measure of equality, as white coaches are generally free from racial expectations.

Hammock is just not certainly one of those coaches.

“Of course, I want other black coaches to have the opportunities that I have,” he said. “I want to represent black coaches in the right way and make sure that I can help provide more guys with opportunities. And I think it’s important for all of us to do the right things, do the right thing and put our teams in a position to win so that others behind us have a chance to become the first black coach to win a national championship.”

Hammock, who’s 43, could do it himself. That could be tough at NIU, which might need to win the MAC and be ranked higher than the winners of Conference USA, the American Athletic Conference, the Mountain West and the Sun Belt to make the playoffs. Then NIU would need to undergo a bracket with star programs with greater budgets and dearer talent. Northern Illinois has only one former player on the NFL roster for 2024; Michigan, for instance, has 41.

But Hammock clearly has the flexibility to educate. If he keeps winning, other job offers could come his way — which could be ironic, considering he almost didn’t get the possibility to educate.

Hammock played running back at NIU, with two 1,000-yard seasons and two Academic All-American honors. In the primary game of his senior 12 months, he rushed for 172 yards and two touchdowns in a surprising win over Wake Forest — then was diagnosed with a heart condition that ended his profession.

“I never wanted to be a coach. I never wanted to coach people like me. I was a jerk in college,” Hammock said. “But when the game is taken away from you, you realize how much you love it, you realize how much the team spirit is a part of your life, and I wanted the opportunity to get back into the game.”

Hammock went to Wisconsin as a graduate assistant, where he was mentored by the quarterbacks coach. Henry MasonAfter stints at NIU, Minnesota and Wisconsin again, he moved to the NFL in 2014 to educate running backs for the Baltimore Ravens. He was also mentored by Eric Bieniemy, who’s Exhibit A for black coaches who were never given the chance to change into head coaches that similarly talented white coaches got.

Hammock desired to change into a college coach but was unable to get an interview, even within the lower league of FCS, Division I college football.

“I really had it in my head to turn it down,” Hammock said. “Just because there are so many more goalies now than there ever were. … It’s just another way to keep you from taking advantage of the opportunity, from getting close to the opportunity, in my opinion. So I thought, you know what? I’m going to be an NFL assistant.”

Then the job opened up at NIU. Historically, the predominant reason black coaches were excluded from consideration was because they weren’t a part of the predominantly white network of faculty presidents and athletic directors. In all walks of life, people are inclined to hire people they know. But NIU athletic director Sean Frazier happened to work with Hammock at Wisconsin. And Frazier was black.

Hammock landed his dream job and embraced his old coaching mentality, prioritizing relationships, learning and private growth over the brand new, transactional nature of faculty football.

“I really grew as a man at NIU and the impact that the coaches had on me and my development as a student, I wanted to have that same impact on others,” Hammock said. “I spent five years in the National Football League. I fully understand what transactional means. But for 18-22-year-old young men, it takes more than that. They’re at a critical point in their lives where they need to grow so they can make great decisions as they become adults, as they become fathers, as they become husbands, as they become productive members of society.”

That could be hard to do in top-tier programs, where players sign with the very best bidder after which bounce from school to highschool. But those programs also provide the perfect opportunity to realize certainly one of the last “first black” milestones in sports.

Is Hammock occupied with taking it to the following level?

“My goal is to make the most of this season, right?” he said. “We just got a big win over Notre Dame. How will we get our players ready for the following game?

“I can’t predict what will happen in the future.”