Bears' missteps run risk of stunting rookie QB Caleb Williams' growth

Former Bears coach Matt Eberflus brought film clips.

Eberflus traveled the country in January, flying on private jets with general manager Ryan Poles, in search of an offensive coordinator. Every six-hour interview was the same: After a brief introduction, Eberflus would have the candidate explain his offense. He’d present late-game hypotheticals — ironic, in retrospect — and ask which plays each candidate would call. He’d show film clips of the plays and ask follow-up questions.

Then Eberflus ventured into more open-ended queries, looking for in-depth answers.

‘‘Some guys would give you A-B-C,’’ he told the Sun-Times in August. ‘‘I’m really looking for A to Z.’’

He found an F.

Eberflus’ decision to hire coordinator Shane Waldron wasn’t the first — or last — mistake by Bears leadership this year. Each one has compounded the risk of jeopardizing rookie quarterback Caleb Williams’ development, the way the Bears stunted Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields. The stability the Bears so craved for Williams — to the point of teaching him Waldron’s playbook a month before they drafted him first overall in April — has vanished.

In 2017, the Bears drafted Trubisky in the first round and fired his coach at the end of the season. In 2021, they drafted Fields in the first round and fired his coach when the season ended. The Bears allowed the same thing to happen to Williams.

Eberflus was a problem, but he wasn’t the only one. A franchise that has won only six playoff games since its 1985 Super Bowl season has issues that go far deeper. Chairman George McCaskey, president/CEO Kevin Warren and Poles have been entrusted to fix them. That’s troubling, given that they let them fester in the first place.

Warren appears no closer to finding a home for the Bears’ new stadium — or anyone to pay for it — than he was when he started in April 2023. Poles is expected to remain in his role next season, but he flubbed his initial hire of Eberflus. And the Bears have yet to win a playoff game in McCaskey’s 13 years as chairman.

Their first mistake was keeping Eberflus after last season, despite a 10-24 career record. Poles thought the Bears had momentum after they won five of their last eight games, even though three of the eight worst teams in the NFL were among those they beat. Rather than pair an offensive-minded head coach with his future No. 1 draft pick, he chose to let Eberflus hire a coordinator. Warren and McCaskey co-signed, the same way they did when Eberflus was fired Friday. Bears players’ frustration reached full boil after Eberflus failed to use a timeout to stop the clock in the final seconds of the loss Thursday to the Lions.

‘‘God don’t make mistakes,’’ safety Jaquan Brisker wrote cryptically on X about 10 minutes after the firing.

Eberflus decided to call defensive plays again in 2024, a task that took away from his control over the two other phases of the team. He took a more active role in the offense this season — he rarely was involved in former coordinator Luke Getsy’s schemes, regardless of what he said publicly — but still couldn’t smooth over concerns about Waldron’s playbook and style. By Week 3, players took their concerns public that Waldron had allowed mistakes, particularly by his rookie quarterback, to go unchecked in practice.

‘‘Don’t feel like you can’t coach us,’’ tight end Marcedes Lewis said. ‘‘I want to be coached. I want to be great. This is not, you know, this is not for play. This is our job.’’

It wasn’t Waldron’s for long. One month and one day later, Waldron called for a handoff to backup center Doug Kramer, who never had run the ball at the high school, college or pro level, against the Commanders. He fumbled at the goal line in a game the Bears lost on a now-infamous, season-ruining Hail Mary.

A week later, after a dispiriting loss to the Cardinals, Eberflus quickly shot down any thought he would replace Waldron. After one more game, however, he fired Waldron in his trademark clunky style. He let Waldron linger at Halas Hall all day Monday after a loss to the Patriots before firing him Tuesday morning, costing replacement Thomas Brown a day of preparation for the rival Packers.

Brown improved Williams’ passer rating to 99.2 in their three games together. Naming Brown the interim head coach, however, risks scuttling the progress he has made with Williams, who is by far the most valuable asset at Halas Hall.

Brown was one of the nine candidates Eberflus interviewed in January. He picked the first person he met with and made Waldron the only coordinator the Bears flew to Halas Hall for a second interview. The Bears were comforted by Waldron’s experience: He had been the Seahawks’ play-caller for the last three seasons.

They thought Getsy was too green to adjust during games. The Bears averaged the fourth-most yards per play in the NFL in the first quarter last season but fell to 25th in the second, 27th in the third and 26th in the fourth.

Eberflus and Poles were deliberate in their coordinator search. They wondered whether their shotgun marriage to Getsy in 2022, forged when Eberflus hustled to round out his staff, was to blame for their struggles. Eberflus and Getsy weren’t close beforehand, though they shared an agent in former Bears player Trace Armstrong. Armstrong also represents Waldron — and Poles, too. Eberflus admired the Packers’ offensive scheme, of which Getsy was a part, and made the hire.

Fields openly questioned Getsy last season. On Sept. 23, 2023, the same day defensive coordinator Alan Williams resigned as a result of conduct issues, Fields said he was playing too robotic.

‘‘Could be coaching, I think,’’ he said.

It was. But those coaches keep changing — the Bears are on their third offensive play-caller and third defensive play-caller since the start of last season — and the results are the same. That has to change, most of all for the sake of the quarterback who provides the best hope for lasting change at Halas Hall.