After watching tape of Sunday's 20-19 loss to the Packers, Bears coach Matt Eberflus spoke to reporters Monday about three things that stood out to him:
(1) Eberflus was impressed with how Caleb Williams performed.
The rookie quarterback completed 23 of 31 passes for 231 yards and a 95.0 passer rating and rushed for a career-high 70 yards on nine carries.
"The distribution to the skill was really good," Eberflus said. "His timing, his progressions were really good. His whole week [in practice] was like that. His competition percentage was high during the week."
Williams was at his best late in the game when he put the Bears in position to attempt a game-winning field goal after being sacked on back-to-back plays.
On third-and-19, he twisted away from a defender in the backfield, sprinted to his right and fired a dart to Rome Odunze for a 16-yard gain. On fourth-and-3, Williams threw a perfect back-shoulder fade to Odunze for 21 yards. The rookie followed by beating a blitz with a 12-yard strike to Keenan Allen.
"The throw to Keenan, [Williams] was able to adjust and change the protection to max protection and be able to deliver the ball on time and be able to see that," Eberflus said. "That was really good to me. I had a meeting with him this morning and we went through all the plays, and there's a lot of good plays in there."
(2) In his first game as offensive coordinator, Thomas Brown made a concerted effort to throw screen passes to receiver DJ Moore.
Moore caught a game-high seven passes for 62 yards. His longest gain was 16 yards on a screen pass on the Bears' first possession of the game.
"DJ is really good run-after-catch," Eberflus said. "He does a lot of things well, but that's one thing he does well. He's like a running back with the ball in his hands. Has got great contact balance. You saw that on those screen passes.
"I showed those in the team room today, and the effort that other guys put into those plays: the other receivers, Keenan, Rome, all the guys blocking for him, the linemen doing the kick-out blocks. It was really, really good in terms of the execution, but the effort was even better."
After the game, Williams lauded Brown for quickly relaying play-calls to him.
"I do like the tempo in which we operated in terms of play-caller to the quarterback, quarterback to the offense, getting on the line of scrimmage," Eberflus said. "That was way better in terms of the energy and the timing of it. That's going to be good going forward, too."
(3) Eberflus praised Jake Curhan, who entered Sunday's game in the first quarter at left guard after Ryan Bates exited with a concussion.
"I was proud of the way Jake came in," Eberflus said. "Did a nice job, did a solid job for playing multiple positions but thrown in there at the guard position."
Bates, who remains in concussion protocol, started in place of Teven Jenkins, who sat out the game with an ankle injury. The Bears are hopeful that Jenkins will be able to return Sunday when they host the Vikings at Soldier Field.
"Teven Jenkins has a chance to potentially get back in there this week," Eberflus said. "We'll see how it progresses over the next 48 hours."
