The Bears will feature a different defensive play-caller in Week 2. Second-year defensive coordinator Alan Williams will not travel with the team to Tampa, Matt Eberflus said Friday.
Williams will be away from the team due to a personal matter. He does not have a timetable for return. Eberflus will call the Bears’ defensive plays in Williams’ absence.
Williams, 53, is in his second stint as an NFL DC. He served in that capacity for the Vikings during part of Leslie Frazier‘s tenure in the 2010s. Also serving as the Lions’ DBs coach under Jim Caldwell for four years, Williams spent 14 years — over two separate stints — with the Colts during his 23-year run in the NFL. The Colts employed Williams as their DBs coach under Tony Dungy and later Caldwell and then as their safeties coach under Reich.
Eberflus calling signals will not mark too much of a change, considering he is a defensive-minded HC who served as the Colts’ defensive play-caller from 2018-21. The Bears are coming off a tough season on defense, dropping to last place in points allowed as they retooled in the first year of the Eberflus-Ryan Poles regime last season. The team struggled to match up with the Packers in their first post-Aaron Rodgers outing, with the Jordan Love-led team putting up 38 points (though, one of those scores came on a Quay Walker INT return) in Week 1.
It is certainly not uncommon for defense-oriented coaches to also call the signals for his team, and the COVID-19 pandemic involved several HCs and coordinators missing games due to contracting the virus. Eberflus said that would be the best option in Williams’ absence than handing the duties off to one of his defensive assistants. While some teams have an experienced option as a senior defensive assistant — a position the Bears utilized via the Mike Pettine hire in 2021 — no other Chicago assistant has called defensive plays for an NFL team. That said, the Bears have experienced defensive backs coaches in Jon Hoke and Andre Curtis, who have respectively been NFL staffers for 18 and 17 seasons.
Couldn’t even tell he was calling Defensive plays last week anyways
lets speculate wildly
I hope Alvin Williams or his family ok due to the personal matters. The other side of me wonders if Flus didn’t see eye to eye in the way Williams had been calling the defense.
Sad news for Williams, Best possible news for the Bears defense. People associated with the Bears seem to have a ton or personal problems lately.