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Courtney Cronin, ESPN Staff Writer
LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Ahead of rookie minicamp Friday, Bears coach Matt Eberflus wasted no time in naming Caleb Williams as Chicago’s starting quarterback.
“No conversation,” Eberflus said. “He’s the starter.”
Eberflus’ declaration confirmed the inevitable decision for the Bears after they drafted the former Heisman Trophy winner with the No. 1 overall pick last month. Williams was the only quarterback the Bears hosted on a top-30 visit, and Chicago was the only team Williams visited ahead of the draft. Bears coaches began teaching the former USC quarterback their offense ahead of his pro day in Los Angeles and again while Williams visited Halas Hall in early April.
Williams also took it upon himself to work with his private quarterbacks coach, Will Hewlett, on the fundamentals of the Bears’ offense before taking the field for this weekend’s minicamp.
“You always want to get ahead if you can, and so with those things that they gave me, I would take it to my QB trainer and we would use the cadence, we would use the drops, we would use all those things so that’s not something that’s on my mind throughout the process of when I actually got here,” Williams said.
Eberflus said the Bears gave Williams and Hewlett the basics of the offense, which the quarterback said included the verbiage, route tree, cadence and how to operate in and out of the huddle.
The head start has given Williams the confidence to help others learn the offense at the rookie minicamp.
“Right now I feel pretty good,” Williams said. “Obviously we’ll go out here today, and we’re going to have a few mess-ups, probably, and things like that, working to do eliminate those as fast as possible. But you need those things to grow and progress throughout the time and years and things like that. So excited, but I feel pretty good right now.”
Eberflus said the Bears have several benchmarks that they expect Williams to reach over the next few months ahead of training camp.
“Full understanding of the concepts: run, pass, checks and his fundamentals,” Eberflus said. “The fundamentals that we have in place for him, which he’s really good fundamentally but we have some things we want him to work on and improve as well.”