Chicago Bears’ QB injury woes have team making desperation move for Week 3

The Chicago Bears host the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday Night Football in an early-season clash of NFC contenders. As expected, Ben Johnson’s team must find a way to navigate the test without Caleb Williams after the quarterback suffered a grade 2 hamstring injury last Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings. What was initially feared to be a season-ending injury will only cause Williams to miss three or four weeks, which is good news for Chicago in the long term.

In the short term, finding a replacement for him has been a bit of a problem. Tyson Bagent, the Bears backup quarterback, suffered a concussion during his relief stint a week ago. Although he’s officially cleared protocol, Chicago is expected to start third-stringer Case Keenum against the Eagles.

MORE: Bears’ Caleb Williams injury update: Grade 2 hamstring recovery timeline

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport has the latest:

From @GMFB: Case Keenum is expected to start tonight for the Bears, as QB3 takes center stage. pic.twitter.com/QberbM4zRS

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) September 28, 2026

What this means for the Bears

This is obviously not an ideal situation for the Bears. Philadelphia’s defense is no picnic and falling to 1-2, while also trailing the tiebreaker with Minnesota, would not be a great recipe for success. Williams seems like he’s going to be back sooner rather than later but there’s always the chance it takes a bit for him to get back to full health.

Bagent has proven to be entirely serviceable in his short NFL career. It wasn’t all that long ago that the fringier part of the Bears fanbase was pushing for him to start over Williams. To not have him out there will be a bummer.

To Keenum’s credit he has put together a long and reasonably productive NFL career. Chicago is his eighth team in a 12-year career. He also hasn’t started an NFL game since 2023 so things could go any number of ways in a standalone window with a lot of eyes watching.

Should be pretty interesting.

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