Bears must assess where Matt Eberflus would lead them
Ryan Poles (right) has yet to make it clear if Eberflus (left) is returning or being fired.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
The Bears’ pattern of changing coaches so often isn’t getting them anywhere, and that’s been one of the arguments in favor of them keeping Matt Eberflus rather than firing him and rebooting yet again. If the Bears move on to a new head coach, he’d be their fifth since firing Lovie Smith at the end of the 2012 season.
But continuity simply for the sake of continuity is pointless. Does anyone think they should’ve stuck with Marc Trestman, John Fox or Matt Nagy in the hope that keeping everything the same would eventually produce different results?
Continuity is only valuable when a team is certain it has the right guy, as the Steelers are with Mike Tomlin and the Ravens with John Harbaugh. Tomlin has had zero losing records and 11 playoff berths in 17 seasons. Harbaugh has had two losing seasons and reached the postseason 11 times.
Those guys get margin for an off year because there’s every reason to believe they’re the ones who can fix it.
Bears general manager Ryan Poles and team president Kevin Warren spent this season weighing whether they have that level of confidence in Eberflus. As of Tuesday afternoon, the Bears had yet to schedule his end-of-season press conference, which would signal he is returning, or announce his dismissal.
When the Bears fired Nagy, Fox, Trestman and Smith, it was the morning after the final game. The delay in clarifying Eberflus’ status likely reflects the lingering uncertainty after a season in which the Bears had playoff ambition but fell short at 7-10.
The record itself isn’t the issue. The Bears had a torn-down roster and were 3-14 in Eberflus’ first season, and stepping up from that to seven wins is good progress while also facilitating some excellent player development. But the details and detours along the way make the decision more complicated.
“We have done a lot of good things ... yes, we have done well,” Eberflus told the Sun-Times just before the season ended. “We’re setting ourselves up for being on the rise and going into the future.”
But he also acknowledged the negatives on his ledger.
The biggest red flags on Eberflus are the departure of two assistant coaches for non-football reasons, monumental late-game collapses, an embarrassing start to the season in which the team looked unprepared and his struggles as the public voice of the franchise amid various controversies and mishaps.
Teams don’t usually see a coach forced out because of their conduct, but the Bears had it happen twice. The first was defensive coordinator Alan Williams, who had worked with Eberflus since 2018, resigning for personal reasons after the season opener. At midseason, the Bears fired running backs coach David Walker.
The Bears never specified what either coach did, but when Poles was asked about the two of them, he said, “We have expectations here ... If you don’t meet those expectations of how you move around this building and how you treat people, how you talk to people, how you act, you don’t belong here.”
Eberflus unequivocally took responsibility for Williams and Walker in the Sun-Times’ interview and conceded, “It doesn’t look great,” but said the Bears “did our due diligence in terms of calling people and vetting the candidates; We’ve gotta ... just improve and do it better.”
He lacked awareness when he initially addressed those situations publicly, refusing at first to answer whether Williams was on staff or not and praising the Bears’ “awesome” culture when they fired Walker. That didn’t go over well, and being able to convey clarity and control in those situations is essential to the job of a head coach.
He slipped similarly when it came to wide receiver Chase Claypool’s ordeal and quarterback Justin Fields’ injury.
There are concerns when it comes to actual football, too.
When it comes to the stagnant offense, any complaints about coordinator Luke Getsy are attached to Eberflus. That was his hire, and the Getsy-Fields pairing was fundamentally flawed. Whether Getsy was strategizing around Fields’ limitations or hindering Fields by not scheming to his strengths, it was problematic. And it was Eberflus’ responsibility to intervene.
The Bears looked totally adrift in their season-opening blowout loss to the Packers at home and were similarly overwhelmed two weeks later against the Chiefs. They followed with the worst collapse in franchise history by coughing up a 21-point lead late in the third quarter to lose to the Broncos. Then, after supposedly straightening themselves out, the Bears had a historic loss to the Lions in Week 11 after taking a 12-point lead with four minutes left.
That’s all on Eberflus.
Poles and Warren must assess whether those were hard lessons that will steer Eberflus to success or lapses that are liable to recur.