The expectations and standards for Bears quarterback Caleb Williams will get progressively higher as his first season with coach Ben Johnson goes along. While it’s reasonable for that process to take until midseason for them to really click, Williams needs to show growth and deliver results in the meantime.
And at this critical moment for him, former coach Matt Eberflus will be on the other sideline trying to take him down Sunday when the Bears host the Cowboys. Months after the Bears fired him, Eberflus landed as their defensive coordinator under coach Brian Schottenheimer.
Williams vs. Eberflus is compelling.
Williams spent most of his rookie season with Eberflus, and neither side seemed to love the experience. Williams said in the book American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback that he wasn’t given proper guidance on watching film and had other concerns about that coaching staff, while Eberflus responded on the Doomsday Podcast that the staff held “daily, coached film sessions” for Williams.
There’s an entire mess to untangle as to how poorly Eberflus and his staff coached Williams or whether he was unreceptive, but the end result was a lose-lose: Eberflus got fired in November and Williams fell well short of his and everyone else’s expectations as a rookie as the Bears went 5-12.
Williams’ focus after practice Wednesday was on taking the next steps in Johnson’s offense, including being more disciplined about footwork, having a better grasp of pre-snap cadence and using his eyes to manipulate a defense, and he wasn’t eager to rehash an ugly breakup.
“We’re past that, but it was good,” he said. “Our time together wasn’t wasted. We didn’t win as much as we wanted, but we’re past that.”
On the field, Eberflus and Williams know what to expect. Eberflus likely has thorough knowledge of Williams’ weaknesses, while Williams pointed out that he “played a bunch of ball versus that defense and how he runs it” from practices.
Setting aside his many shortcomings as a head coach, Eberflus has always been a savvy defensive play caller. However after the Cowboys traded superstar pass rusher Micah Parsons to the Packers, their defense is off to a rough start.
The Cowboys were solid in their opener, losing 24-20 on the road to the defending champion Eagles, but alarms went off when they allowed a monster offensive performance by the Giants last week in a 40-37 overtime win.
The Cowboys enter the game 27th in points allowed (30.5 per game), 30th in opponent passer rating (114.2) and 31st in opponent completion percentage (76.6).
Granted, those numbers came against Jalen Hurts and Russell Wilson, a Super Bowl MVP and a future Hall of Famer, respectively. Even taking into account that Wilson is 36 and winding down his career, he knows how to identify holes in a defense much more precisely than Williams does.
Williams’ first two games looked, predictably, like an extension of his training camp. There were bright spots, but far too many misses and mistakes.
The opener against the Vikings fell apart for the Bears as he struggled through an 8-for-20 passing stretch, and in the ensuing blowout loss to the Lions, he had just 136 yards passing before mop-up time.
Between the two games, he sits fairly close to where he ended his rookie season in completion percentage, down slightly 61.5, and in passer rating, up slightly at 89.1.
Williams said he’s seeking “constant growth in every form and facet” as he acclimates to Johnson’s offense and looks to get his career on track.
Throwing accuracy has been at the top of the list of issues to address, and Johnson has echoed Eberflus in pointing to Williams’ footwork as the key to correcting it. While Eberflus made an indirect reference to it last season, Johnson has hammered it privately and publicly with zero ambiguity.
Williams is getting the message now. He is seeing a clear correlation between his feet being aligned at his target and his passes being sharp, as well as the reverse.
“It’s up there at the top of the list of things to be able to be accurate,” Williams said. That’s huge for me just being able to do some simple, basic stuff of having my feet and eyes all tied together.”
Johnson has not taken any overt shots at Eberflus and the previous staff — he spoke very highly of Eberflus as an adversary from going against him while he was the Colts’ defensive coordinator and the last three seasons as Bears coach — but said in training camp that little to none of how Williams was coached last year overlapped with what he’s being taught now.
Johnson intends to take Williams to new heights by rewiring him from the ground up, which theoretically would render much of Eberflus’ background knowledge moot. That has yet to take root, though, and if Williams continues to play similarly to how he did as a rookie, Eberflus’ intel will be very relevant.
Williams acknowledged that he and Eberflus have a sense of each other’s tendencies, but said, “I’ve grown, and he’s probably grown as a d-coordinator.”
The he-said, he-said ends Sunday. All the history between Eberflus and Williams and the debate over who was to blame for what will fade Sunday, and it’ll be clear then which of them has truly moved on and who’s stuck in the past.
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