Caleb Williams and Ryan Poles were outstanding stars

The series finale of “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Chicago Bears” aired Tuesday night as the newly formed team left training camp and the preseason behind and headed full steam ahead toward the 2024 NFL season.

As expected, Caleb Williams, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, was one of the key figures in the series.

Bears safety Jonathan Owens also appeared in the series. on FaceTime with Olympic gymnastics champion Simone Biles during her stay in Paris (episode 1) and subsequent visit to Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever (episode 5).

Here are the highlights from this season’s docuseries featuring the Bears on HBO:

Caleb Williams looks good as QB1

The hopes and dreams of Chicago’s professional football players rest on the outstanding skills of Caleb Williams, who looked like a franchise quarterback in “Hard Knocks.” And maybe he will be the man to break the franchise’s poor history at the position.

Bears fans don’t need reminding that Chicago is the only NFL team whose quarterback has never thrown for 4,000 yards or more or scored 30 or more touchdowns in a single season (Erik Kramer came closest with 3,838 yards and 29 TDs, and that was nearly three decades ago in the 1995 season). Bears fans also don’t need reminding that their old rivals to the north, the Green Bay Packers, have a combined 18 seasons of 4,000 yards passing by five different quarterbacks.

After the first episode of “Hard Knocks” showed some of the ups and downs of training camp for the rookie quarterback, the mood was consistently positive as Williams began playing in preseason games.

Williams saved the best for last: an electrifying, eight-play, 90-yard touchdown drive that included a spectacular 45-yard pass to fellow rookie Rome Odunze and later a touchdown run.

Williams has been in the spotlight for a long time on this edition of Hard Knocks and will be under even more scrutiny when the Bears open their first week at Soldier Field against the Tennessee Titans on Sunday.

Ryan Poles builds a winner

As a general manager, the players you select and the trades you make determine your tenure on a team.

Given the draft and free agent capital invested in the 2024 edition of the Bears, both the team and general manager Ryan Poles are entering a crucial season after an ambitious roster overhaul.

Poles pulled off perhaps one of the most lopsided trades in league history when he traded the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft to the Carolina Panthers for a 2024 first-round pick and wide receiver DJ Moore. While Moore had a career year for the Bears, the Panthers secured the No. 1 pick for Chicago.

During training camp, the Poles explored another big-money move, with NFL Films and HBO tracking their efforts to acquire New England Patriots pass rusher Matthew Judon. Judon was eventually traded to the Atlanta Falcons, as the Bears wanted a contract extension with the player before the deal was finalized.

Although that move didn’t materialize, Poles has built a Bears team that could contend for a playoff spot (two of seven USA TODAY sports experts predict Chicago will be a wild-card team).

Pole’s openness and vulnerability (more on that later) made him a compelling character in the season of Hard Knocks.

Bears now in an unusual situation

Poles, head coach Matt Eberflus and the rest of the Bears leadership now appear to be in the enviable position of having a franchise quarterback on board for years to come.

In Tuesday’s Hard Knocks finale, Poles was seen watching players in Saturday’s big game between Georgia and Clemson, and he ran into a familiar face: Giants general manager Joe Schoen, known from Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants. Schoen’s quarterback situation is shaky at best with starter Daniel Jones returning from major knee surgery, and the offseason Hard Knocks revealed that the Giants may have discussed drafting one of this year’s highly touted passers.

“It must be nice,” Schoen said to the Poles, “not to look at that, um…”

“Quarterbacks?” Poles replied. “Hopefully it stays that way for a long time.”

Where were the F-bombs?

Last year’s “Hard Knocks” with the New York Jets was riddled with F-bombs, with the main culprit being head coach Robert Saleh.

If you noticed something was missing from this year’s Hard Knocks with the Bears, you were not alone.

Episodes since the last F-bomb on “Hard Knocks”: 5.

The Bears didn’t have fiery F-bomb tirades from head coaches of years past like Saleh, Jon Gruden, Jeff Fisher and Rex Ryan (who can forget the famous “Let’s go get a (expletive) snack” tirade?).

Jarvis Landry’s unforgettable 1,080-word tirade at a receivers meeting with the Cleveland Browns in 2018 contained 23 F-bombs.

That’s a lot of F-bombs in less than two minutes.

And 23 more F-bombs than from the Bears. Why was that?

It turns out that HBO didn’t air any swear words out of respect for the McCaskey family, who own the Bears. Plus, the Bears don’t seem to use a lot of swear words in general.

“I’ll be honest, this team curses a lot less than any other team I know, but it’s out of respect for the McCaskey family,” “Hard Knocks” director Shannon Furman said on the CHGO podcast. “That’s something they don’t want to do and they don’t want to see. So it’s kind of a decision that was made out of respect for the (McCaskey family) for letting us into their home and a desire to be respectful to them.”

NFL cutdown day takes emotional toll

Last year, the Jets hampered NFL Films and HBO by denying them access to the head coach and general manager as they made personnel decisions and released players.

This year, the Bears dove headfirst into the inner workings of the NFL’s annual mass casualty event, and that poignant drama played out in the season’s final episode, which aired a week after the Aug. 27 cut deadline.

Bears general manager Ryan Poles himself had to cut back in training camp in 2008 after coming to Chicago as an undrafted offensive lineman from Boston College. He finds cutdown day grueling: “For me, it’s one of the worst days in this job. It’s hard to tell so many people that their dream is coming to an end.”

“I’ve been there. It’s a place where I try to bring a lot of empathy to the way we communicate it, because these guys have put a lot of time and effort into putting together a football team,” Poles said. “I try to give really good feedback so they can at least know the ‘why’ behind it and continue to work on their craft and hopefully have the opportunity to start a football team at some point.”

The Bears gave a few well-known names a farewell gift on this shortened day.

One by one, the players met with the Bears’ brain trusts – wide receiver and Hall of Fame star Collin Johnson, “Canadian Eagle” Theo Benedet, quarterbacks Brett Rypien and Austin Reed, and thoughtful defensive back Adrian Colbert.

It was Colbert’s firing – and the emotional toll it took on Poles – that moved viewers of “Hard Knocks.” After Colbert takes a seat in the general manager’s office, a tearful Poles excuses himself for a moment to collect himself. There is silence as Colbert waits patiently, knowing full well what is to come.

“I appreciate you, man. There’s something different about you,” Poles tells Colbert, whose harrowing childhood story was told last week on “Hard Knocks.” “I hate that we have to do this. There are some people you just root for, and you’re one of them. You’re a good guy, a great teammate. That’s one part of this job that I hate. I’m grateful for our time together.”

“There are certain people who have something special about them. And that is the case with you. Wherever your career takes you, I hope you achieve great things.”

Colbert expresses how much he appreciates the opportunity with the Bears, the 10th NFL team he has joined. The two hug and Colbert leaves the office and heads into the unknown world of professional football.

It was one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the history of Hard Knocks.

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Caleb Williams looks good as QB1

Ryan Poles builds a winner

Bears now in an unusual situation

Where were the F-bombs?

NFL cutdown day takes emotional toll

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