As both try to move, Bears QB Caleb Williams says time with former coach Matt Eberflus 'wasn't wasted'

The expectations and standards for Bears quarterback Caleb Williams will rise as his first season with coach Ben Johnson goes along. It might take until midseason for them to really click, but, in the meantime, Williams needs to deliver results.

And at this critical moment, former Bears coach Matt Eberflus will be on the other sideline trying to take him down Sunday, when the Cowboys visit Soldier Field. Months after the Bears fired him, Eberflus landed in Dallas as the defensive coordinator under coach Brian Schottenheimer.

Williams vs. Eberflus is compelling.

Williams spent most of his rookie season with Eberflus; neither seemed to enjoy 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 the coaching staff. Eberflus said on the Doomsday Podcast that the staff held “daily, coached film sessions” for Williams.

There’s an entire mess to untangle when it comes to how poorly Eberflus and his staff coached Williams or whether he was unreceptive, but the 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 on the 5-12 Bears.

Williams’ focus after practice Wednesday was on taking the next steps in Johnson’s offense, including being more disciplined with his footwork, having a better grasp of pre-snap cadence and using his eyes to manipulate a defense. 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 is familiar with Williams’ weaknesses, while Williams pointed out that he “played a bunch of ball vs. that defense and how he runs it” in practice.

Setting aside his shortcomings as a head coach, Eberflus always has been a savvy defensive play-caller. But after the Cowboys traded superstar pass rusher Micah Parsons to the Packers, their defense is off to a rough start.

Dallas was solid in its opener, losing 24-20 on the road to the defending champion Eagles, but alarms went off when the Cowboys allowed a monster offensive performance by the Giants in a 40-37 overtime victory in Week 2.

The Cowboys are 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 better than Williams does.

Williams’ first two games looked 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. In the blowout loss to the Lions, he had only 136 passing yards before mop-up time.

He sits fairly close to where he ended his rookie season in completion percentage, down slightly at 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. 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’s 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 — he spoke highly of him as an adversary after going up against him while Eberflus was the Colts’ defensive coordinator and the last three seasons as the Bears’ coach — but said in training camp that little to nothing of what 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, however, and if Williams continues to play similarly to how he did as a rookie, Eberflus’ intel will be 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, and who has truly moved on and who’s stuck in the past will be clear to see then.