Does the Pope wear a Bear jersey?
He now can, if he wants to.
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams has sent a signed jersey to Pope Leo XIV. Leo, born as Robert Francis Prevost, is a Chicago native. And, given that there’s only one NFL team in town, it’s safe to say he’s a Bears fan.
As noted by the @Bearsszn account on Twitter, the Leo gift may also be a leak. The white jersey isn’t the usual Bears’ blue-numbered, striped-sleeves road option. The orange-numbered, stripe-free shirt looks to be a sneak preview of the Bears upcoming Rivalries uniform.
This year, the teams of the NFC North and an AFC South are due to get the four-year, eight-teams-at-a-time Nikefied enhancement (supposedly) to a team’s available collection of game gear.
Leo has gotten his before anyone else. It’s just another one of the perks of being the Holy See, along with the inflammability.
As Netflix expands its NFL footprint to include a full five toes of NFL games in 2026, it’s hoping to enhance its desire to “eventize” football with some normalcy.
Elle Duncan of Netflix tells the Sports Media Watch podcast that the studio show for the games will have the same people involved.
“We’re not doing an 18-game slate,” Duncan said, via Derek Futterman of Sports Media Watch. “We want every single one of our events to, yes, have a through-line and some consistency, and you’ll get that with the desk and the talent, but, ‘How are we making each one of those things feel special and different and honor where we’re doing it at?’”
Netflix will stream the Week 1 game from Australia between the 49ers and Rams, the Thanksgiving Eve game between the Packers and Rams in L.A., two Christmas games (Packers-Bears and Bills-Broncos), and a Saturday afternoon game to launch Week 18.
Officially, Netflix doesn’t aspire to have a full, season-long NFL broadcast package. However, with its current arrangement in place through 2029, Netflix could eventually decide to make a bid on one of the various weekly windows.
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams did well enough in the biggest moments to lead the team to a division title and a thrilling playoff win over the Packers last season, but there are still those who feel Williams doesn’t do enough in the more routine moments.
That school of thought holds that completing 58.1 percent of their passes puts Williams and the Bears in a position to have to play from behind or in tight games more often than they would if he was more accurate over the long term. During an appearance on Pardon My Take, Williams said that he’s never found himself saying that his critics are correct before explaining how his style of play and willingness to throw a ball away when necessary contribute to the low percentage.
Williams said that he’s more concerned with “how they win games” than the numbers, but said the team will improve on that front anyway.
“Obviously I want to get that up, get the completion percentage up,” Williams said. “Some of the things that I do on the field, it negatively impacts that. But we’ll get it up just to shut everybody up and help them understand. . . . We’ll get it up, we’ll make everybody’s heart feel warm and lovely, and it’ll also help us in the long run of winning games and starting games better, starting games faster, doing all those things.”
Williams’s point about winning against stats could be underlined by the fact that his completion percentage dropped while the Bears surged in 2025. If everything moves upward in Year 3, there should be fewer doubts about what the quarterback brings to the table.
Ron Rivera, who worked for 13 straight seasons as an NFL head coach (and who won the NFL’s coach of the year award twice), will be staying put at his alma mater.
Via Ron Krochick of the San Francisco Chronicle, Rivera has signed a three-year deal to remain the G.M. at Cal.
He was hired in 2025. The contract, which apparently is retroactive to 2025, runs through March 2028.
Rivera will make $800,000 per year, with the ability to double his pay based on the football program’s success. He’ll maximize his compensation with 10 wins.
Rivera’s job includes supervising the head coach, and it includes a buyout of $250,000 if Rivera leaves before the end of the 2026 season. He reports directly to the school’s chancellor.
Rivera coached the Panthers from 2013 through 2019, and the Commanders from 2020 through 2023. He was hired by Cal in 2025.
Earlier this year, Rivera interviewed for the Cardinals’ head coaching job.
A second-round pick in 1984, Rivera was a member of the legendary 1985 Bears defense. After an eight-year playing career, all in Chicago, he entered coaching in 1997.
Before the Texans nearly made it to the AFC Championship for the first time in franchise history, they started the year 0-3. Then, they shook things up by abruptly cutting safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson.
It was a surprising move, especially since the Texans (who acquired Gardner-Johnson in a trade with the Eagles) made no effort to re-trade him. They simply cut ties with him.
The Texans never provided a clear explanation of why Gardner-Johnson, who had just won a Super Bowl in Philadelphia, needed to go. In a new interview with Tim Graham of The Athletic, Gardner-Johnson supplies his side of the story.
According to the player, things started to go sideways at training camp in West Virginia, after a confrontation with “the GM’s friend.”
“If y’all going to cut me, cut me,” Gardner-Johnson said. “But I’ll give nobody reasons to cut me. I haven’t. I don’t. I’m not a cancer. There’s nobody in this locker room that says, ‘Chauncey’s a problem.’ The media loves me. The only thing that’ll do it is something that triggers somebody that has a say in the building that can alter somebody else’s mind. That happens every time.
“That’s how I got [cut] in Houston. One person that’s not technically a part of the organization called me a B-word at Greenbrier. I get out my body; he says something to the GM, and the next thing I’m cut.”
The Texans declined to comment for Graham’s story. Still, the objective timeline doesn’t exactly support the effort to connect the training-camp incident to Gardner-Johnson’s release.
The Texans were at The Greenbrier from August 4 to August 7. The Texans cut him on September 23, a full 47 days after leaving West Virginia.
It had been reported that Gardner-Johnson struggled to learn the Houston defense, and that he “finger-pointed” in lieu of accepting responsibility for his mistakes. Another report indicated that the team had become exhausted by his complaints.
Whatever the reason for his exit from the Texans, Gardner-Johnson has never stayed in one place for very long. Picked by New Orleans in the fourth round of the 2019 draft, the Saints traded him to the Eagles after three seasons. After one year in Philly, he signed with the Lions. After one year with the Lions, he returned to the Eagles. After another year with the Eagles, he was traded to the Texans.
Cut after three games in Houston, Gardner-Johnson landed on the practice squad in Baltimore. One week later, the Ravens released him.
The Bears signed him in late October, and he finished 2025 in Chicago. Then, Gardner-Johnson signed with the Bills.
Seven seasons. Six departures. Gardner-Johnson can say it’s not him — and maybe it isn’t. Still, he’s made six exits in less than four calendar years (the Saints traded him to the Eagles on August 30, 2022).
On several occasions, Gardner-Johnson aired grievances after his departures. He called his year with the Lions “hell,” and he claimed he was “lied to.” He said the Eagles traded him after the team won Super Bowl LIX because they were “scared of a competitor.”
He complained to Graham about his week in Maryland: “They sign you in the middle of the night with the plan for you to play that week, then literally 14 hours later they trade for a safety and tell you, ‘Oh, we’re going to start him and keep you on the practice squad.’ I’m a Super Bowl champion!”
Despite his performance in 11 games with the Bears, Gardner-Johnson told Graham that he knew the Bears wouldn’t re-sign him.
“I’m a firecracker, but let’s take the body of work: never legally been in trouble; never physically harmed a person,” Gardner-Johnson said. “But I haven’t been a captain ever in my life. They say, ‘You gotta lead the right way.’ My definition of leading is winning. . . . There’s a lot of captains in this league — and I want this to come out — that’s just for jersey sales. I can show you three, four captains right now that I wouldn’t get behind. Why would I get behind anybody that doesn’t believe in himself? I’ve played for plenty of false captains, but I gotta fake it, like, ‘That’s my leader!’”
He knows that people already think the Bills will cut him. Bills GM Brandon Beane was nevertheless willing to roll the dice on Gardner-Johnson, after both doing the research on the player and making sure he understands the ground rules.
“We talked about just making sure, ‘You’ve got to be a good teammate,’” Beane said. “We don’t want any cheap shots in practice or anything like that. You want to keep it in between those lines, but you do want his edge.”
Implied in that message is that Beane concluded Gardner-Johnson has a reputation for not being a good teammate, and for taking cheap shots in practice.
So far, the Bills seem to like him. Defensive coordinator Jim Leonard calls Gardner-Johnson a player who “loves football,” and who “loves being in the building.”
The challenge isn’t to be in the building. The challenge is to stay in the building. Gardner-Johnson vows that he will.
“I’m going to win the next two out of three Super Bowls,” he told Graham. “How? Look where they placed me at. Look who’s my quarterback. If I got a fucking fighting chance, it’s over with.”
Frankly, that’s the kind of fire the underachieving Bills need from their new “firecracker” safety. And maybe it’ll be enough to have a “C” on Gardner-Johnson’s jersey when he walks onto the field for Buffalo’s Week 1 game at, yes, the Texans.
