Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams suffered a Grade 1 hamstring strain in Sunday’s game, an injury coach Ben Johnson says has Williams week-to-week. The way Williams reacted on the field, and the way he’s responded to criticism since, has become the story.
When the hamstring pulled, Williams collapsed and screamed in pain. He was carted off the field but gave the crowd a thumbs up on his way out. Critics say the reaction looked far more severe than the injury turned out to be, which is reportedly moderate at its worst.
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy called Williams a “thespian” who acted like he’d torn “both ACLs, MCLs and everything else” when he’d only “tweaked his hammy.”
Williams didn’t respond to Portnoy directly. Instead, he reposted an account called DAEMAR, which has 1,700 followers, mocking Portnoy for having a college student arrested for throwing pennies at him during a public appearance. Police did arrest a college student who threw coins and shouted an antisemitic remark at Portnoy during a pizza review. That repost has since drawn 31,000 likes and 1.1 million views on X.
Williams also reposted a user named Kei, who wrote in defense of him:
“The constant need to emasculate the dude is so strange. Starting to think the people who do it are actually attracted to him and won’t be honest with themselves.”
Williams read both posts and chose to amplify them rather than answer his critics in his own words. He has not personally addressed the criticism over how he reacted to the injury or the mockery aimed at his masculinity.
Letting other accounts carry the argument may have been the calculated move — it keeps Williams out of a direct public fight. But it also means the quarterback let the moment pass without speaking for himself, which is exactly the criticism some have leveled against him in the first place.
