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Bears WR DJ Moore: Bad body language only temporary, connection with QB Caleb Williams ‘on track’

Vaseline October 6, 2024

DJ Moore doesn’t know how the networks do it, but somehow their cameras catch his every grimace and grin after a play where Caleb Williams misses him.

From there it’s pretty easy to guess where this is going. Those clips quickly spread across social media, building into a firestorm about the Bears’ top wide receiver becoming irritated with their prized starting quarterback.

It looks bad, and Moore knows that, but also doesn’t deny that his expressions reflected what he felt in those cases.

“The faces and everything, they’re just faces,” he told the Sun-Times. “I’m like, ‘Dang, we could have connected,’ or there could have been something better in that piece.

“I don’t really worry about what people put out there because as a person I’ve never been frustrated. If a play doesn’t go as well as we wanted, I’m angry, but after that moment I’m back to normal.

The Bears place enormous value on ‘normal me’. From the moment Moore arrived at Halas Hall in 2023 as part of a blockbuster trade that sent the No. 1 pick to the Panthers that year and led to the Bears landing the No. 1 pick this year and drafting Williams, he was a role model of what they pursue. to be excellent on the field and leadership off it.

Moore was “an incredible teammate” for former quarterback Justin Fields, one source noted, even as the passing game broke down. He is equally behind Williams, and he may occasionally be annoyed by his increasing acclimation.

The poor body language under scrutiny this week came after a breakdown where Moore was open in the end zone against the Rams near the end of the first half, and Williams assumed he would sprint to the back corner. He overthrew him, and FOX cut to Moore twice, steamrolling.

Williams said Wednesday that it wasn’t necessarily his fault or Moore’s, but that the two were out of sync. He opted to “let everything settle down” and then put things right with Moore on the bench so that they would “have a great chance” the next time the opportunity arose. Moore declared the connection resolved, saying, “We’re going to go down the Caleb road and we’re going to do it right.”

It’s hardly a crisis that a seventh-year veteran sometimes rolls his eyes when he sees what a newcomer doesn’t yet know. The gap between the two — Williams will make his fifth start against the Panthers on Sunday, while Moore has played nearly 6,000 snaps — is a chasm by NFL standards.

“It does test your patience, but you have to know that you were once in the same shoes and everyone looked at you like, ‘Dude, come on, catch up,’” Moore said. ‘You can’t put any more pressure on him. He’s the starting quarterback and the NFL is tough.

“Even though we may be playing faster than him at the moment, he will get there.”

His belief in the latter is crucial. Moore is signed until 2029, so there is a lot at stake for Williams’ success and he sees a bright future. No teammate was more excited during training camp than Moore, calling him “elite talent.”

He knows the other side of the spectrum all too well. Moore has dealt with inexperienced and inept quarterbacks throughout his career, especially with the Panthers from 2018 through ’22. Impressively, regardless of who he was paired with, he averaged nearly 1,100 yards rushing through his first six seasons.

He is happy to have Williams. Waiting for him to fully arrive is a challenge for someone eager to be the centerpiece of a thriving passing attack, but Moore expects their cohesion to improve and him to develop into a game-changing quarterback.

“I have absolute confidence that things will turn around for him,” he said. “We’re on track to be connected, but we just need to get the Wi-Fi to three sizes.”