Just three games into his second season, Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams had a chance at redemption against his former coach Matt Eberflus, who’s now the defensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys.
Eberflus was fired before completing his third full season with Chicago last year after a Thanksgiving loss to the Detroit Lions, which made him the first coach in franchise history to be fired during the regular season.
To his credit, Williams had the best performance of his career, most notably, not taking any sacks from Eberflus’ Cowboys defense. As a rookie, with Eberflus as head coach, Williams was sacked a NFL-high 68 times, so operating in a clean pocket also led to one of the best performances of his young career, throwing for 298 yards, four touchdowns, and zero interceptions on Sunday.
Getting the first victory of the season for new head coach Ben Johnson, Williams didn’t feed much into the narrative of facing his former coach, saying he was happy to have that type of performance no matter who the defensive coordinator was.
“I don’t think it really necessarily matters who when you are able to have a game as effective as we were able to have on offense,” Williams said. “It feels great, to be honest, whether it was Matt or it was any other defensive coordinator, Flo or anybody else that we played or anybody else that we’re going to play. When you’re able to go out and score a bunch of points on offense, it’s fun, obviously, because you put in so much hard work and you want to be able to go out there and execute the plays that are called. That’s what happened today.”
A lot was made by Johnson coming into the matchup about the Bears’ practice habits, their lack of execution, and self-inflicted wounds in their first two losses of the season, and so as Williams reflected on his performance, production and execution mattered most.
Whether it comes against Eberflus or any other defensive coordinator, the Bears are hoping that their quarterback and head coach can keep this offense rolling from this point on, using the win over Dallas as a turning point to the year.
