INDIANAPOLIS — Caleb Williams climbed to Podium 4 inside the media interview room at the Indiana Convention Center and offered a hearty “Good morning, everybody!” as dozens of reporters held up their phones to capture images of the talk of the NFL scouting combine.

Not a second later, before greetings could be returned, a question was yelled from the crowd.

“Are you afraid to compete?” the person asked, a reference to Williams’ decision to skip on-field workouts and medical testing this week.

Williams didn’t flinch at the odd, confrontational phrasing, a slight smile on his face as he offered that, no, he was not afraid, it was simply a decision he made with his family and team.

The USC quarterback, the presumptive top pick in this year’s draft, handled the rest of his 13-minute interview Friday with equal ease. He was confident yet personable, answering goofy questions about whether birds are real — “Government-related,” he quipped — and serious ones about potentially going to the Chicago Bears at No. 1.

His willingness to play in Chicago, where so few quarterbacks have succeeded, has been a topic of debate this offseason. Williams debunked the notion he wouldn’t want the Bears to draft him in an interview with ESPN’s Pete Thamel earlier this week. And he expounded Friday, noting the Bears’ 7-10 record in 2023.

“That’s pretty good for a team that has the first pick,” Williams said. “And they’ve got a good defense. They’ve got good players on offense, and it’s pretty exciting if you can go into a situation like that.”

The Bears already have done extensive work on Williams as a player, the 2022 Heisman Trophy winner who threw for 8,170 yards with 72 touchdowns and 10 interceptions in two seasons at USC. But Bears general manager Ryan Poles has said a couple of times they’re trying to narrow in on the quarterback prospects as people.

Williams is certainly a unique one, a prospect like few the NFL has seen, given that he already has built his brand with millions of dollars in name, image and likeness deals and his own public relations team.

He hasn’t hired an agent. And he’s doing the combine on his own terms too.

As noted by that eager reporter, Williams and fellow prospects Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye aren’t doing on-field workouts Saturday with the other quarterbacks. Williams noted teams can watch his 33 college starts to get an idea of what he can do.

And according to reports, he might be the first player to attend the combine and not undergo medical exams, one of the primary purposes of the event for NFL teams.

Williams said he would do medical testing for teams that bring him in for interviews.

“Not 32 teams can draft me. There’s only one of me,” he said. “So the teams that I go to for my visit, those teams will have the medical and that will be it.”

Williams, who grew up in Washington, D.C., grinned when asked about meeting with the Commanders, who own the No. 2 pick. He said playing for Washington would be “familiar” and “really cool.”

But the Bears hold the keys to where Williams will land, and he called those meetings “awesome.”

Poles, coach Matt Eberflus and their staffs met with Williams on Wednesday night, and Williams said the short time forced them to stick mostly to talking about football, with the Bears testing his understanding of the sport. The more in-depth relationship building will come in the weeks ahead during private meetings.

The question he wants the Bears to answer in those meetings is: “Do you want to win?”

“If it comes up, the main thing I’ve said is I want to go to a place that wants to win,” Williams said. “A whole 360. From the top all the way down to the janitors, the people that make everything run. Everybody wants to win, everybody’s a part of that and we all take care of each other.”

Williams said he’s not worried about the Bears’ quarterback history because “I tend to like to create history and rewrite history.” In the ESPN interview this week, he said his goal is to be “immortal” and a “legend” along the lines of Michael Jordan and Walter Payton.

“That’s my standard,” he said Friday. “That’s what I play for. I don’t play for fame. I don’t play for money. I don’t play for jewels and things like that. Just go out there and win as many games as possible, be the best that I can.”

Williams clearly was prepared for a number of topics that have swirled around him in the last several months.

He played up how much he cares for his teammates. He said his leadership grew through his different experiences at Oklahoma and USC, including the Trojans’ 7-5 season in 2023. And he noted that the much talked-about crying in his mother’s arms after a loss to Washington in November was a result of how much he cares about his team.

“There’s not many people in the world that get to experience what I experience every game day, every practice day,” he said. “It always goes back to that for me. It’s something that I only get to experience. It’s something that I really care about, which isn’t only winning the game but doing it with my teammates. Every time we lose, I feel like I let my teammates down.”

After his interview session was up, Williams showed off a playful side, sneaking into the media scrum in front of former USC teammate Brenden Rice to ask about being the son of Jerry Rice.

“Man, it feels even better to be a teammate of Caleb Williams,” Rice said.

The question now is whether Williams’ next teammates will be Bears. He was asked if he would be disappointed if he wasn’t picked at No. 1. He answered without hesitation.

“It’s not a thought in my mind,” Williams said. “I don’t think that I’m not going to be No. 1. I think I’ve put in all the hard work, all of the time, effort, energy, into being that. So I don’t think of a Plan B.

“That’s kind of how I do things in my life. I don’t think of a Plan B. Just stay on Plan A, and then when things don’t work out, find a way to make Plan A work.”

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