The Bears announced on Thursday night that rookie tackle Chris Williams, the fourteenth overall pick in the draft, has undergone surgery to repair a herniated disc in his back.

And according to Mike Mulligan of the Chicago Sun-Times, some of the scouts attending Thursday night’s preseason game between the Bears and the Chiefs expressed skepticism regarding the Bears’ claims that Williams’ surgery was the result of a new injury.

”I heard that on the radio,” one scout told Mulligan.  “Why are they lying about it?  You know it will all come out.”

Another scout echoed what we heard on Thursday:  ”Our doctors said the guy would need to do something.  I guess they were right.”

Some of the scouts also said (as we also heard on Thursday) that Williams had been removed from multiple draft boards due to his back problem.

”We don’t know anything about [Williams being removed from other teams’ draft boards],” coach Lovie Smith said.  ”He wasn’t falling off ours.  This injury, from what I am told, isn’t a pre-existing injury, so that is what we’re going with.  Injuries happen in camp, and you go from there.  We were unlucky a little bit with this, but Chris will be OK and we’ll go from there.”

The Bears also insist that Williams won’t be shut down for the year, which contradicts what he heard last night.  And we’re not inclined to believe the Bears on this one, because they gain nothing from announcing in the preseason that they’ll get zip from their first-round pick in 2008, a year in which expectations for a team that made it to the Super Bowl only 18 months ago have been tempered, to say the least.

Besides, one of the scouts told Mulligan that this is a big deal, and that it might plague Williams for a long time.

”That is a very serious injury for a lineman,” the scout said.  ”I would be more worried about his career than this season.”

If that’s true, G.M. Jerry Angelo might need to start worrying about his career, too.