Matt Eberflus reflects on relationship with Nick Saban, advice for Caleb Williams' development

In 1990, Matt Eberflus was in his junior season as a linebacker at Toledo. The Rockets made a coaching change prior to that season, opting to hire a first-time head coach who spent time coaching defensive backs in the NFL – Nick Saban.

Saban spent one year with Toledo before returning to the NFL level as a defensive coordinator under Bill Belichick with the Cleveland Browns. But as Eberflus ventured into the coaching world, he kept in touch with Saban, who went on to become the greatest college coach of all-time.

Now in his third year with the Chicago Bears and a few months removed from Saban’s retirement from Alabama, Eberflus invited him to Halas Hall. Their conversation was featured in the first episode of Hard Knocks as the Bears look to turn Caleb Williams into the franchise quarterback they’ve long waited to see.

“Coach Saban’s been one of my mentors, and I have a few really good ones,” Eberflus said on The Pat McAfee Show Wednesday. “Guys that are in the College Hall of Fame like Gary Pinkel, Coach [Rod] Marinelli, Coach [Monte] Kiffin. All those guys that I was with. Coach Saban is definitely up there, a guy that I’ve stayed in touch with. And I lean on him heavily for a lot of things because he is a defensive-minded head coach and he’s worked with quarterbacks over the course of his career. And I was really just trying to get him to come up here.

“Once he retired, I said, ‘Hey, Coach, anytime you want to come up and visit, come on in.’ He had a speaking engagement up here and he stopped by for like three hours and we had that talk.”

Matt Eberflus: ‘Competitive reps’ important for Caleb Williams

Saban, of course, has a strong record of sending quarterbacks to the NFL. Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts are perhaps the two most notable, and Bryce Young went No. 1 overall to the Carolina Panthers a year ago. But, like Eberflus, Saban also comes from a defensive background. In fact, he worked with the defensive backs at Alabama until his retirement in January.

For Matt Eberflus, he got a look at how a defensive-minded coach should work with a talented rookie quarterback. His biggest takeaway, he said, was for Williams to maximize every chance he gets to take reps. That will help set him up for success when the season gets underway next month.

“It was really good to glean that information from him in-person. Talking about Tua and Jalen and different things and how he worked with those quarterbacks and really, helped them along in terms of development,” Eberflus said. “It’s gonna be about the development phase of Caleb Williams learning through performance and through experience every chance he gets. We’ve got a lot of these competitive reps against our 1 defense. We’ve got competitive reps tomorrow against Cincinnati in a joint practice and these games coming up. And he has to level up and get better just by learning through the performance and the experience every single chance he gets.

“I think that with the offensive coordinator we have, Shane Waldron, and myself giving him a dual education in terms of, ‘Hey, this is how we operate in the offense. But also, hey, this is what the rules for the defensive players are and this is how we can scheme against these things,’ is really gonna fast-forward his education process, I believe, in a really quick manner.”