Alan Williams’ mysterious departure as Bears’ defensive coordinator, explained by what we really know

The swirling drama involving the Chicago Bears made the sports landscape surreal on Wednesday, while also becoming the most disgusting day in recent memory when it comes to how sports are covered.

It kicked off early in the day with Bears QB Justin Fields throwing his coaching staff under the bus when asked about his lack of production. This was quickly washed away and replaced with rumors about Bears defensive coordinator Alan Williams. At this point very little is known about what is actually happening with Williams and Halas Hall outside of the fact that the DC tendered his resignation, and a statement was shared on Twitter.

It’s bizarre to have a defensive coordinator step away from his job three weeks into a new NFL season, but rapid resignations aren’t exactly unheard of. What made this scenario spiral out of control was a small number of unvetted, unproven, yet verified Twitter accounts that had no history of breaking news, suddenly having intimate details about Williams, alleging that his home and Halas Hall had been “raided” by the FBI in search of illegal materials.

The “raid” rumor turned out to be categorically false.

Let’s cut through the noise and break down what we do know about Williams and the Bears, as well as what allowed these rumors to get so much traction.

It was noted on Sunday that Williams didn’t travel with the team for their game against the Buccaneers due to personal reasons. Local media in Chicago attempted to find out what his status was from coach Matt Eberflus, who dodged the question.

This is extremely abnormal behavior from a coach or an organization. If Williams had tendered his resignation or been fired the Bears should have had a statement ready, or at least have Eberflus prepared to brief the media on his DC’s status. This is one of the top coaches on the entire team, yet questions of why Williams wasn’t with the Bears were being avoided.

There might not be anything malicious here outside of incompetence at an organizational level. It’s wholly possible the team knew that Williams had resigned and wanted to wait to put out a statement, but at that point rumors were already emerging.

It wasn’t until 3:35 p.m. ET, after rumors had been swirling for hours, that the Bears put out the shortest statement possible that offered no information.

“Alan Williams submitted his resignation as the team’s defensive coordinator this afternoon.”

By dodging any discussion the Bears created a breeding ground for speculation to run rampant — and it did.

We’re not going to amplify the accounts that started the most disgusting rumors about Williams, but there were several small accounts, with no history of ever breaking news, who suddenly had detailed information about alleged criminal investigations.

These went so far as to allege that former Bears player Charles Tillman, who became an FBI agent prior his retirement from football, was part of the investigating team that raided Williams’ home and the Bears facilities.

If this happened 10 years ago people would look for a verified account to substantiate a piece of news. It wasn’t an infaillible process, and rumors still spread — but there was at least one small safeguard to tell users that someone might not be legitimate.

Now, with verification being tied to an $8 monthly payment it’s become impossible to discern real reporters from any rando with a YouTube channel, which is where these rumors began. This is now compounded with Twitter’s “revenue sharing” model, which incentivizes paid accounts to gain as many interactions as possible in a month in order to get a cash payout. Real or fake, the name of the game is getting as many eyeballs as possible on your tweets — and the best way to do this is breaking news, even if it’s fake.

The key to making the rumors spread was Dov Kleiman, a shameless Twitter aggregator who will promote any, and every bit of news in the NFL world for the purpose of garnering views. Kleiman rarely, if ever, vets the news he’s sharing with his 200K+ followers — and when he’s caught sharing bad info his excuse is routinely “other people did it too.”

So when Kleiman ran with the Alan Williams rumors it gave them credence in the eyes of followers, particularly when paired with Kleiman’s specific brand of aggregation, which involves writing long tweets and only surfacing a source when you click “see more,” an act he knows few users do. So this makes it routinely seem like Kleiman is getting quotes, when in reality he’s just taking other people’s work and obfuscating his attribution.

Kleiman would go on to delete his tweets about Williams without a mea culpa. It was business as usual.

On Wednesday afternoon 670 The Score in Chicago spoke to an attorney representing Alan Williams who claims there is no criminal activity related to his client.

It may seem awkward for Williams to get legal counsel, but there are any number of benign reasons someone might speak to a lawyer in this situation ranging from looking over his contract with the Bears and the circumstances of his exit to another personal matter. In addition, with potentially libelous reports being written on Twitter there could be another element too.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter dropped an update on what happened to Williams before the Week 3 slate began on Sunday. Schefter said Bears HR was involved in the decision for Williams to step away after inappropriate conduct that didn’t rise to the level of criminality.

“It was not criminal activity, but it was inappropriate,” Schefter said. And Bears HR department was involved in the decision for Alan Williams to step aside.”

New information could emerge, but as it stands there’s no real evidence a criminal investigation took place. We could say “be better” to those who are trying to earn cash off Twitter by sharing fake stories, but they won’t.

We’ll have more information on Alan Williams if anything substantive emerges from a legitimate source.