Matt Eberflus' offseason goal — laying the foundation for Caleb Williams

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

The last time Bears head coach Matt Eberflus was part of a team with a rookie as its primary quarterback, it was by accident.

In August 2016, Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo broke his back during the third preseason game. Dak Prescott, the team’s fourth-round rookie, took over — and would eventually become the Offensive Rookie of the Year and go to his first of three Pro Bowls.

“The whole team rallied around him,” Eberflus, who was the Cowboys’ linebackers coach then, said Friday before the Bears’ first rookie minicamp practice at Halas Hall. “We had a really good year that year and a couple years after that. Certainly he stepped right into that — and owned it.”

Caleb Williams and the Bears, though, are owning it from the very beginning. The former USC star is the Day 1 starter — Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields never were — and isn’t shying away from the expectations put upon him.

"I think anyone with a brain knows that this dude is being tabbed as like a generational prospect, and I don’t think he shies away from that," said fellow Bears rookie quarterback Austin Reed, who trained with Williams in Jacksonville earlier this year. "I think he understands the work that it’s gonna take to become that instead of just thinking he is that already."

Eberflus is in a unique situation, too, as the first Bears coach to ever have the No. 1 overall pick play quarterback as a rookie.

Unable to lean on his own experience, Eberflus and general manager Ryan Poles spent the offseason talking to friends around the league who had been in a similar spot.

“We certainly got some good information from those guys,” Eberflus said.

The Bears are leaning on that advice in the early days of Williams’ first offseason program with the team. The stakes are the highest in franchise history — the Bears have the best chance in their history to develop a quarterback into one of the greats of the game.

Eberflus’ future will depend on it, too — he’ll be judged on wins and losses but also how Williams grows as a rookie. When the Bears decided to keep a defensive-first head coach to pair with Williams, they bucked a prominent league trend. This season will prove whether they were prescient or reckless.

Poles’ former team drafted Patrick Mahomes in 2017 and Eberflus’ former boss, Frank Reich, had No. 1 overall pick Bryce Young last year with the Panthers. Thomas Brown, the Bears’ new pass-game coordinator, called plays for a portion of the Panthers’ ill-fated 2023, too.

Their advice?

“Just have a great foundation of how you put things in,” Eberflus said. “I think that’s important.”

The Bears began teaching Williams the playbook in the month before they drafted him first overall. At the NFL Scouting Combine, Williams’ pro day and during his pre-draft visit to Halas Hall, the Bears walked Williams through parts of their playbook and had the quarterback teach it back to them.

Now in Lake Forest as a full-time employee, Williams said he could feel the solid setup awaiting him when it came time to install the offense.

“From all the things that we do, even starting [Friday] morning, there’s a process, there’s a plan … ” Williams said. “When we’re in the film room there’s a set plan in how we do it. So adding those things that add structure to us.

“The plan makes it a lot easier to be executed when you have all that in place.”

Eberflus has long said the most important trait he looks for in coaches is the ability to teach. He built up an offensive staff designed to help Williams this offseason.

Quarterbacks coach Kerry Joseph was named the CFL’s Outstanding Player in 2007 as a passer, while offensive assistant Ryan Griffin played behind Tom Brady on the Super Bowl LV-winning Buccaneers.

“I always think it’s important to have, especially at that position, guys that have played the position,” Eberflus said. “I think you can always glean a lot of information from those guys through those experiences. Either for where they were at, their own playing experience, or who they were with. I think that’s always important to be able to have at the quarterback spot.”

He praised new coordinator Shane Waldron’s approach to installing the offense, calling it “likeable” “learnable,” and easy to execute.

“Well, I think when you have teachers that are good at what they do, they make it likable in how they put it in and how they teach it,” he said. “It’s exciting to be able to see that.”