After wondering if he and Ben Johnson would get along, Bears’ Caleb Williams now having 'joy' at Halas Hall

This is what living the dream is supposed to feel like for an NFL quarterback.

Caleb Williams led the Bears to their biggest win over the Packers in years with a 46-yard touchdown pass in overtime, casually stuffing his hands in his hand warmer as he watched the ball sail to wide receiver DJ Moore. He showed up the next day for a food drive in the city wearing a foam cheese-grater hat. He gave his uniform from the game to Lyrical Lemonade’s Cole Bennett with the inscription, “[Expletive] Green Bay.”

He was back on the practice field Tuesday afternoon, partaking in what has become a regular cat-and-mouse routine with equipment manager Tony Medlin, whom Williams messes with by not turning in his jersey promptly.

With Williams continuing to show great potential and the Bears heading to the playoffs, it couldn’t be more of a contrast to this time last year.

He’s having a blast.

“The most joy comes from coming into that locker room and seeing everybody smile,” Williams said. “When you walk into the locker room, everybody’s happy, everybody’s cheering, everybody’s dancing. For all the hard work that we put in, that I put in, the sacrifice that we make to be able to have those moments, that’s joy.”

Williams said he had fun last season, too, but it obviously wasn’t like this. His development was stunted by a shaky offensive line and poor coaching; the Bears were on a 10-game skid. Now they’re closing in on an NFC North title as they visit the 49ers on Sunday.

A lot of the credit for that turnaround goes to Ben Johnson.

Williams recently said he was ‘‘the best coach in the world,” and the longer they’ve worked together, the more their competitive drive has brought them together.

But it didn’t start off that way. Not at all.

“At certain parts, it felt like our relationship was pretty fragile,” Williams said, mispronouncing that last word “frah-gee-lay” with a big smile as he quoted a line from the movie “A Christmas Story.”

Neither coach nor player knew what to expect from the other when they met in January.

Johnson saw tremendous talent in Williams dating to college and undoubtedly winced at how the Bears mishandled him. He said Tuesday, though, he had no idea from afar what kind of worker he was, how sharp his mental game was and whether he’d be coachable.

Williams knew Johnson by reputation and spoke highly of him even before the Bears hired him, but it took awhile to get a handle on him. Johnson’s intensity can easily be misinterpreted.

“He can get mad, then start smiling at the same time, and it’s kind of creepy because you don’t know if he’s serious or joking,” Moore said in the summer.

Williams certainly hadn’t been coached that hard as a rookie.

“It was like, ‘Gee, this dude doesn’t seem like he likes me,’ ” Williams said. “But you start figuring out that that’s just him and . . . he cares so much about winning.

“And then when you get off the field, he’s one of the guys. He’s a players’ coach. He laughs and jokes with us. He’s bumping us around, so it’s fun, it’s enjoyable when we’re off the field. It’s fun and enjoyable when we’re on the field, but it did take a little bit.”

It hasn’t all been smooth. Williams acknowledged in training camp that they had their share of conflict, but those arguments were opportunities. Rather than bristle at Johnson’s corrections, which were relentless and emphatic, Williams grew from them.

That’s what he “craved” as a rookie and didn’t get from coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron. He wanted a teacher with expertise and high standards. He wanted a harsh grader because he grades himself harshly.

He got all of that.

“That’s kind of how I’ve grown up, [with] hard coaching,” Williams said. “I’ve played my best ball with a coach like that.”

It also helps, he added, that “when you get out there on the football field, he tends to call the right play at the right time.”

There has been an adjustment on Johnson’s end, too.

While he was drawn to the chance to build a young quarterback from the ground up, he had never done it. He had Jared Goff at quarterback during his three seasons as Lions offensive coordinator. Goff was in his late 20s, had already made a Pro Bowl and a Super Bowl and had received four years of expert coaching from Sean McVay.

Williams didn’t have nearly that mental library after one season in the league, let alone the relationship equity that Johnson had with Goff. They’re getting there.

“We both have the same goals,” Johnson said. “He understands that now, and you only get to that by spending a lot of time together. Every day, we’re spending one-on-one time together to where we can be very transparent with each other.

“What I’ve grown to love about him — I hope he would echo the same thing — is we’re mentally very similar. We share a lot of the same competitive drive, and we think very much the same way in a lot of regards.”

That’s good. The Bears hope it gets even better.

Everything still hasn’t clicked in its entirety between the two. Williams said recently that it’ll take more than one season to mesh with Johnson to the point that “we’re basically saying the exact same thing” in every facet of the offense. But the most encouraging part of their first year together is that both see it heading in that direction.