Come on, Matt Eberflus, give Caleb Williams some preseason game snaps this week

I think Matt Eberflus is toying with a sad, disheartened sports town. I would not be surprised to turn on the first installment of HBO’s “Hard Knocks’’ this week and hear the Bears coach say, “Let’s see how long I can keep everyone hanging over when Caleb Williams will play in the preseason.’’ I picture him cackling at the prospect of Chicagoans facing more daily episodes of the walking-dead White Sox.

Before this, I didn’t think Eberflus had a mean bone in his body. He was cheerful. Engaging. Earnest. He was the one NFL head coach who would listen to a side judge’s explanation of a blown call and then walk away with a look on his face that said, “Golly, he seemed like a convivial fellow.’’

But I’m seeing a dark side now. Eberflus was asked last week what it would take for Williams to get on the field Saturday against the Bills. He responded with a big bowl of nothing.

“It’s just going through the whole process,’’ he said. “This is a big week for us. We’ve got to really make strides here. We’ve got a sense of urgency. We have to get better now. We’ve got to see that from everybody. That’s an important part of that.

“That’s what we’ve talked to the guys about. They understand that. It’s going to be a physical week. It’s gonna be a week where we’ve got to get better.”

Matt, baby, sweetheart – we need this. We need Williams, OK? The city craves something to feel good about. The Sox are beyond miserable. The Cubs pretend to be something good but aren’t. The Bulls can’t find a team that wants Zach LaVine. The Blackhawks play when it’s cold outside. The Sky are on break for the Olympics.

So the guessing game over whether Williams will play this Saturday is cruel. It’s like teasing a cat with a ball of yarn. I’m not sure if we’re the cat or the yarn.

We need something to feel positive about sports-wise, and that something is a somebody. The Bears took Williams with the No. 1 overall pick in the April draft because they saw what everyone else with decent vision saw: a quarterback with a strong, accurate arm and an ability to make plays when none seemed available. He’s the most exciting rookie QB in franchise history.

Our selfishness aside, Williams needs to play. He needs reps against non-Bears defenders. He’s not close to being a finished product, or even a halfway-done product, and any action he can get against other teams will serve him well down the line. Half of the battle of being an NFL quarterback is being able to process what you see on the field pre-snap. The more looks Williams gets now, the better he’ll be later this season and in future seasons.

The natural instinct is to want to protect Williams from injury in the preseason. The Bears have invested the next four years in him, minimum, and it would be beyond painful if he were injured in August by a second-string nose tackle carrying 50 pounds too many. If Eberflus doesn’t feel the rookie will be adequately protected at this point, his hesitancy would be understandable. The offensive line is already beat up.

But football is football, and a knee injury doesn’t care if the month is August or December. It can happen any time. Rookies have a lot to learn, and rookie quarterbacks have everything to learn. It’s the difference between devouring a local library and devouring the Library of Congress.

Every snap Williams takes in training camp has meaning, and every snap he takes in a preseason game will have deeper meaning. When ESPN’s Troy Aikman predicted during the Hall of Fame game on Thursday that Williams would throw for 4,000 yards this season, he surely did so with the understanding that the kid would get a decent amount of snaps in exhibition games. On a related note, I do wonder if someone put edibles in Aikman’s pregame meal. The Bears never have had a 4,000-yard passer, and football is hard. That’s a lot for one rookie.

But this is the time to give your imagination a workout. Four thousand yards? Sure, why not. The reality of NFL football will arrive soon enough. Might as well aim high (non-edible reference).

It’s hard to do that with Eberflus being coy. I’d like to think the old Matt wouldn’t have been that way. In my sepia-toned remembrance, the old Matt, the one with a 10-24 record in his first two seasons with the Bears, would have politely given reporters specifics about when all his starters would play.

The new Matt, the one with the neatly trimmed beard, the made-over hair and the media training, seems to embrace the mysterious.

Come on, Hollywood Matt. Give the parched some water.