Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Transition: Dan Wiederer weighs in on where Caleb Williams ranks among best QBs in Bears history

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Marshall Harris and Mark Grote welcomed on Matt Spiegel and Dan Wiederer for the daily transition segment.

Where's Ryan Pardth? He's not here. Where is he? Where's Pardth? Do we ever find him? I don't think we found him. It's okay. Sometimes you just, you know, you need some time away from Mark Grody and company.

I get it. Telling me. Oh, I'm sorry. Hi, guys. In this business, we do need time away from each other sometimes. You just took some time away from me. That's fine. I hope you're ready to deal with me the rest of the week.

Well, we'll see how the recruit. poop goes. You know what I mean? Like, let's not walk home together today. Let's not do that. We've talked enough today. You're right about that. We are wrapping up the Rehemi Harris and Grody show that is Marshall Harris. I am the Mark Grody portion of the show. Thank you to our producers, Ray Diaz and Mr. Tyler Buehberbaugh as well. Thank you to our video producers today. They were Connor O'Donnell, Jacob Stutz, and Max Curtis. Our guests were Danny Parkins and Mike Florio. And thanks to everybody. for listening today as we now turn to the Spiegel and Holmes show.

I see in here today, it's my Take the North podcast partner. Dan Reeder is in the house today for Lawrence Holmes. What's up, man? Where did you see me first today? Oh, my goodness. The first place I saw, so I was using the facilities, and I was standing, and I was going, and I noticed somebody seemed to be being very aggressive in my peripheral vision. What kind of aggressive?

In the urinal next second. Could you define aggressive? I could just tell that the person next to me going was looking more towards me than he wasn't and making me feel like, okay, what's going on here? And I looked and there he was, Dan Weiderer right next to me. Hi, Mark. Hi. Was that the intentional, like, I'm going to look at you so you look at me and acknowledge of my presence,

even though you're supposed to be eyes straight ahead at the urinal? I told them if there was not a partition separating the two urinals, that never would have happened, but it gave me an opportunity to just say hello. This is the type of team camaraderie we have. on TTIM. Awkward social cues in that situation. That's right. What to do.

It's like a camp. We put ourselves into those things and we come out of them better, I believe. But Spiegel is here too. And I, Matt, you're a star, man. You were awesome yesterday with the Terry Boers tribute. I did listen to the majority of it. I think there's like a few spots that I missed. How dare you?

Seven hours of grieving. You were great. I couldn't get enough of it. It's not an easy task to do. Let me like one guest after another, two guests at the same time. It was, you were deluxe, you were great. Chris Tannehill was incredible too. I don't want to leave names out, so maybe I'll stop listing people right now.

But I think a lot of people probably, and you may be able to tell more, that put that production together for Terry Bores. You were terrific, man. I just want you to know that. I appreciate that. But, you know, it was seven hours about Terry. That was really nice. And it's like, it's funny.

I was talking to somebody in the morning and I was saying like, oh, I'm nervous about this and blah, blah, blah. It's a big spot and I'm proud, but I want to do it right. I don't know if I'm funny enough. He said, you know, the good news is it's not seven hours about you. And I said, well, that's true, isn't it? It's like, wait a minute. So we just let it be about Terry.

And boy, there was a lot to him, you know? It's like the one time I had to like. I had to like break in and kind of re-steer a conversation was when Mike North and Dan Jigots were reunited on Zoom in front of me and they start talking about their show and their history and the score and I just had to gently be like, hey, so let's get this back about Terry. But that's like completely understandable

that these longtime legendary partners are doing that. Like the whole day was just, Tanahill said it afterwards. He said, you know what was really nice about that? we spend a lot of time talking about bad actors in sports or athletes who don't quite get it or coaches were bad. That was seven hours about goodness. All we did for seven hours was talk about how good that man was. I mean, that's amazing.

What a gift that he gave us to be able to do that again yesterday. It was lovely, you know? And like I said, it flowed beautifully. And shout out to Chris Ranji, too. Like, Ranji took the baton, and it's a different relationship. Because you've had the relationship forever, ever with Terry. Ranji was more like the goofy update Terry interactor. You know, so it was a different relationship.

So it was fun to hear him as well. You know, it was crazy. He was like talking to Mike Greenberg, I'm so cool that Greenie agreed to do it and did it yesterday. It's like his impressions of those early shows were exactly what mine were. Like, we had the same kind of effect. like, oh boy, these people are really good. I don't know if I could ever do that. And all these people out here now working in the business 30 years later have figured out ways

to do stuff in the business. It might not be as good as that, but we were also influenced and inspired by it. Amen. And I just wanted to make sure I got that across, and I hope that you are feeling the love for that. And obviously, it's about Terry and his family. I hope that they felt the love as well. And Terry would have wanted it this way, and so does our audience bears. Let's get into the Bears because...

Let's get back into the hand-wringing about sports. After the seven hours of goodness, let's get back. You know what he would do today? And what I will do today is skewer the hell out of Bill Pollyan. So we'll do that a little bit later on, you know? And Weedsie will help me dissect some of that stuff. So we'll get to all of that. Yeah, I don't know if you guys that were able to hear,

but my conclusion was very simple. He's either senile, a clown, or both. like figure it out but I don't know what somebody is Mark said somebody's got to tap him on the shoulder's like hey we appreciate everything you've done for the game real good might be time for you to kind of usher your way out you're a winner you're a winner you're a winner or Dan they could ask him to help hire the next bears head oh yeah let's try that again hopefully hopefully that next search is a long way off now maybe for the first time in a while we can say they're not going to need to go on a coaching search I know one search that is a long way off the search for a franchise

quarterback because they have one Caleb Williams already proving that he is the best quarterback, the best player to ever play the position in Chicago Bears history. And I stated that today. I heard what Dan said on the Take the North podcast when this idea was first presented to him. And I don't think maybe it was told to you in the way that I said it, but Sid Luckman, of course, is the most accomplished Bears quarterback in history. And the best Jewish quarterback of all time? He's also the best 11-game quarterback. The best 11-game quarterback I've ever seen. The best Bears quarterback in a 13-team era, that is him. But as far as modern Super Bowl era football, Caleb Williams is the best quarterback.

It's already, to me, to me, have been proven shown, demonstrated, however you want to put it. There's a ton of layers to this, obviously. For me, my pushback is less at the premise as it is the prematurity of trying to hang the banners and the mission to accomplish things and declaring it's all fixed. That's where my resistance comes from. You'll never last in this business. More than you know. Well, it really is. It really is, though.

It's the topic. It's just the concept of the topic. I like that it made you feel uncomfortable the other day because that was the, that's why I did it because I wanted people to be like, it's okay. He's here. You should be good now. The bar was very, very low. Very low. And so there's a point where you like, you start to get down into it a little bit and you're like,

well, what are we even talking about here? Because the bar is so low, right? Like, you're just like, this is dumb because it's just, it's a competition in an arena where you're like, You shouldn't even be in this arena. Let's try to play in a different arena. You're too good for this league. Like, let's figure it out from there kind of thing. I love that that's the conclusion you came to because that's all I was saying.

It was like, hey, let's compare them to some other stuff instead of other Bears' quarterbacks because to me, that conversation's over. So here's the other part of this. And hopefully Grotie played the part where I screamed, knock it off like three or four times because he hit me with your question as a pop quiz without me knowing it was coming, which got a raw reaction from me. my deal with this is I don't want this city to be so intoxicated by what happened in the four months that just preceded this, that the whole offseason becomes this blind loyalty to Caleb can do no wrong.

And Caleb has no improvement to do. And Caleb has arrived. And Caleb is a top flight quarterback. And Caleb's going to go to four Super Bowls. Like that to me is the skip stepping phase that Chicago gets itself into way too often. And you can tell right now, I'm allergic to it. And it makes me crazy. I resembled that remark from previous iterations of Bears' quarterback Joy.

Name one. I mean, I remember the day I came in here. I can own it. It was after Justin Fields came back against the Cowboys like three different times. What was that game that was like 5140 or something like that? You remember the game I'm talking about? Of course I do. And Justin showed it again and again and again.

And I'm a guy who the next day said, I think they might have their quarterback for the next decade. Like I, I, to the party, Chicago. Well, there's that. Just a few months forever. That's the QB1, the QB1 party that Danny held. And I pushed back on him a lot at times, but there were times where I got, where I felt it and I got suckered in. But I got smarter. We have gotten smarter.

And part of getting smarter, part of getting smarter as a populace and hopefully as a host is that we don't have to go to that kind of place just yet. I love it. And we did. And I do think that like ultimately, to your point speaks, I think like all. of those conversations over time were like very healthy at like illuminating the complexity of the position and understanding how difficult it is to be consistent there. Like you guys put on Kurt Warner every week and if you don't leave that segment feeling like you know a little bit more about why the position is so hard, then you're not listening. You know, because every week there's

like some wisdom where you're like, man, that's great stuff. Put it down in a notebook and file it away. But you were a big part of this too, though. You wrote a bunch of long form pieces when you were at the Trib about Justin and what he had to work on. And one season, you charted his tuck and runs. And you and I talked about it weekly. How many times is he tucking and running as opposed to staying in the pocket and doing what he's being asked to do? Like, those kind of things have helped us realize it.

And then it's helped us appreciate the absurd growth that Caleb had during this season alone. Well, and the other part of, if we're going to marry the two discussions together, like the thing that I always was thrown off by was how much celebration of Justin was done. in games that he couldn't win, right? It was like, oh, he was so close to winning. We love him. He was so close to winning. Whereas this guy now, you put him in a close game in the fourth quarter,

and you put the ball in his hands and the other ten guys in the huddle, and everyone looks at him and goes, yeah, we're going to get this done. And he doesn't get it done 100% of the time, and that's got to, you know, be something that you track over time. But, man, like... The exact opposite was the thing that made everybody realize what was wrong with Justin. Right. The exact opposite, the fact that they couldn't...

When it was time to just go back and pass, in the fourth quarter, he couldn't do it. But it was also really hard to let it go with Justin Fields, I think, for a lot of people because he had a 1,300-yard rushing season in 2022, where he was a blast of a player with some of the long touchdowns that he had. How could you not be like, just throw a little bit? If you could just get that part down, you have, and this is not hyperbole, you've got Michael Vic, right? And then what was

fascinating about that was Justin went to Pittsburgh and then Justin went to New York and you watched these other fan bases say the same thing. Like, oh, he's right there! If he could hit the slider, right? Yeah, right. Like, and it was just never really there. If you get it to sliders, Maddie Ramirez. Yeah, yes. High rear by it.

Joe Man, everybody. The evidence could continue to mount because it's, you know, Justin Fields, only in his rookie season did he throw for less than 60% of his passes being completed. But all completions are not equal. No, he was One of the things that I talked about when I laid out, I know one of the attacks is going to be,

but he can't get his completion percentage where you would like it to be. But I'd rather him dirt the ball than throw away the ball. And there's so many different ways to look at what he's able to do. And not only that, but the arrow is such a sharp up. It's not like this barely going up. With Ben Johnson, from game one to the last playoff game, what he's able to do pre-snap compared to the start of the season, what he's able to do, and going through really, like you could talk to anyone who watches film and they can lay it out perfectly all the ways

he's improved and then the fact that when the game is on the line people spend a whole lifetime trying to be the quarterback that can do the thing that he can already do well and the one thing that fascinated me over the four months of the regular season was listening to the people in the building genuinely gush number one about the level of professional preparation that that he got better with in year two than he was in year one and number two was just the idea that he made this exponential growth in the stuff that happens before the play starts, right? Like it's running the huddle, it's getting the play spit out, it's getting the line of scrimmage, being able to operate, you know?

And so like to your point, Marshall, Ben having his thumb on Caleb, the way he did over the last year bringing out that growth in him gives everybody in the city faith that there's a lot more growth ahead because of the marriage of those two guys, right? And what you've linked him up with to bring out his best. So I wanted to point out, I wanted to make sure we get it here in transition. I don't know how much we'll be able to get to it during the bulk of our show. The Janus and Milwaukee thing, it ended the other night. The game against the Nuggets on Friday night, when the Nuggets didn't have anybody,

except Aaron Gordon, and he didn't even finish the game, okay? And the Bucks had everybody. Well, I guess they weren't quite a full strength, but they certainly had Yonis, and Milwaukee lost to them, making them 18 and 26. Now they're 18 and 27. But that night, Janus left early, and he's sitting there on the, on the bench watching Kyle Kuzma throw this desperation BS on a

Friday night and you kind of knew it was over because after, because then Janice says, I'm going to be out four to six weeks. He says that, two reporters offers that, which goes through and past the trade deadline. And like everybody in NBA circles knew, boy, I think this

thing's over. Milwaukee's probably not going to make the playoffs. Janus is flat out telling you he's not going to be an option for anybody actively at the deadline. and everybody was expecting that the ask was going to come next, or at least the mention of, I'm probably not going to sign an extension. You guys probably got to do what you got to do.

Yonnell also find a way to make it look like it's the Bucks deciding and not Yonnis forcing it, which Marshalls, you know, has been his thing. He doesn't want to be the bad guy. I would never ask for a trade is what he said. Right, right. So he's going to find a way to have it make sense, but this thing ended on Friday night. So I'm not surprised by this news today.

Three and 12 without Yannis. Okay, I could see that. 15 and 15 with Janice in the lineup. That's when you know. Third oldest roster in the NBA. It's over. It's over. They made their big splashes.

It didn't work. But the Damian Lillard splash, man, respect for giving it a shot. Even the Miles Turner splash. All maybe we go double big. And that's what we need. Respect, but it didn't work. It's toast. All double bigs aren't created equally.

Everybody can't be out there with a vuch and Jalen Smith double big lineup. Hey, Bulls, by the way, five games over 500 when Jaylin Smith. Oh, look at that. Five over five with it. But right, don't you think this thing ended and like when you zoom out big picture

and Janice doesn't want to say it's him, but this is him agreeing that, yeah, this thing's over. Yeah, and I'm curious, they're saying the Warriors of the front runners to land him. And, you know, this is that Jimmy Butler got hurt. We got one more shot with stuff. Put him with Janus and see what happens. Everybody wants to play with Steph.

There's rumors about Braun, wanting to go there and make it happen. Like everybody, and wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? I was like, who would not want to play with the greatest shooter of all the time? He changes the gravity of what happens on offense. And he's a delightful guy and loves to pass and just wants to win. Man, hell yeah.

So everybody wants to do that. Also, the Charlotte Hornets are really improved basketball team. And it's really hard to watch the Bulls be on their treadmill and watch other teams either go really bad like the Bucks are going right now or show the propensity to, hey, we got some guys who might be good and we might be better than you in like two years. It's kind of what happened with the Pistons. Remember the Pistons, they weren't winning any games three years ago.

And then now they're at the top of the standings. And the Bulls remain on that treadmill. Getting that race walking speed down. Can't find a mall to go to because the mall is shut down. So we're just going to stay on this treadmill. That's the Bulls right now. Perfectly 500. Perfectly 500.

That is what they are. That's just remarkable. All right. You want to make sure we get that in. I feel better. Everybody feel better? I do. All right.

So you guys, what's the recoup? Is the recoup is like the recap? Yeah. Well, no, it's like it's the refresh time now between not having to talk to Marshall for four hours. Thanks for that. How about refractory period? Is that one? I just want to make sure everybody's on board.

Is that too on the nose? Everybody's good with Caleb Williams being the best quarterback in Bears history, right? We're all good with that. Can we all just say it's okay? I abstain from this ball. It's okay. It's okay to say that. I just, it might have been a premature process of just doing that.

We're back to refractory. Yeah. On tomorrow's show is Caleb Williams the best quarterback in the NFL by Marshall Harris. We're a long ways away from that. Okay. Here's what's coming up on today's show. We're going to talk about the NFL Hall of Fame. I'm going to welcome it to its future.

I have seen the future of the NFL Hall of Fame, and we will say what it is. Little coaching carousel as one of our old cronies might be getting the right job for his own well-being, whether it's the one he wanted or not. And we will check in with your guy, Dave Brickett, who writes about the Detroit Lions and knows Ben Johnson extremely well, but also as an NFL Hall of Fame voter. Correct. Interesting. And a lot of other things to get to. Jay Zawaski is going to join us and tell us why we should be watching the Blackhawks or not. Didn't he get enough being here all day yesterday?

I didn't get enough. It was so lovely to hang out with him yesterday. I love that part of it. As I was listening, everyone's, oh, the Jay's there. Jay's there. Like, every couple hours, oh, there's Jay again. The warmth, man. I needed to sort of a little more warmth.

We're making Jay come back on. And lots to get to. BBT is in the house, along with Alex Kuhn and me, Speaks and him, Dan Weider. Hang out on the Spegel and Home Show on the score. And this segment is sponsored by Jewel Oskow.