CHICAGO, ILLINOIS — The Bears have a quarterback, and the Bears have a phrase, and the phrase is “week to week,” and the phrase is doing more of the work than a quarterback with a hamstring. Head coach Ben Johnson said Monday that Caleb Williams is being treated as “week to week” after he pulled up in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s 9-3 loss to the Vikings at Soldier Field, and the word “treated” is doing a lot of quiet, load-bearing work in that sentence.

To be “week to week” is to be, in the language of the NFL injury report, a person whose availability is not a fact but a recurring appointment. You will be checked on Monday. You will be checked on the following Monday. You will be checked, per the team’s own public expectation, on the Monday before the Eagles, and at each of those checkups the answer will be the same reassuring, non-reassuring phrase, until the phrase is no longer the phrase. The Bears, it is worth noting, are not ruling Williams out for next Monday’s game. The Bears are doing something rarer: they are ruling him out on a schedule, and they have named the schedule “week to week.”

"Week to week" is the phrase the team uses when the answer to 'is he playing' is 'let's ask about that again next week.'"

The injury itself is a right hamstring, sustained in the fourth quarter of a 9-3 loss, which is to say it was sustained at a time and in a manner in which a hamstring is most likely to be sustained, and at a moment in which a Bears quarterback is most likely to have the game already decided against him. The Vikings, who won 9-3, have a defense. The Bears, who lost 9-3, have a phrase. The phrase has, as of this writing, outlasted the game, the loss, and, temporarily, the quarterback’s certainty about his own right leg.

What “week to week” is not, is a diagnosis. What it is, is a policy — a policy of the franchise, applied to the player, in the name of prudence, with the quiet understanding that the prudence is doing the talking so the hamstring doesn’t have to. The backup, who is in concussion protocol, is a separate, concurrent, equally indefinite clause in the same sentence, and the sentence, at this point, has no subject the Bears are willing to commit to by name.

"WEEK TO WEEK," THE DEFINITION

  • Pronunciation: "week to week," said with the exact inflection of a man who does not want to repeat it twice
  • Definition: the answer you give when the real answer is a question you will ask again next Monday
  • Typical duration: until it isn't
  • Games expected to be missed: a number the team is "evaluating"
  • Next scheduled checkup: Monday
  • Next scheduled checkup after that: the next Monday

At press time, Williams was week to week, the Vikings were 9-3, the Bears were 0-and-a-phrase, and a team spokesperson, asked to define the term for the benefit of fans who had not yet learned it, used the exact words the coach used, in the exact inflection, and then, sensing the camera, used them a second time, which is, in the history of the phrase, as close to a definition as it has ever gotten.