The numbers tell the story.
Matt Eberflus’ three-season run as the Bears head coach, which was memorable for all the wrong reasons, ended Friday, a day after his final late-game blunder turned him into a national punchline. And the numbers are not kind.
• 14-32: Overall record as head coach of the Bears
• 2-13: NFC North record
• 3-19: Road record
• 5-19: Record in one-score games
• 6: Current losing streak
• 1: Number of times a Bears head coach has been fired in-season
Any way you cut it, all the Bears did was lose in Eberflus’ three seasons as head coach.
At first, it was by design, a tank job that resulted in the Bears eventually drafting Caleb Williams at No. 1, a well-thought-out plan aimed at building the Bears into winners again.
And despite Williams learning on the job, this season was set up to restore hope in Chicago. But those heightened expectations did nothing but set up Eberflus for a bigger fall.
The Bears made the wrong kind of history when they fired — or “relieved of his duties” in press release speak — Eberflus on Black Friday, the post-Thanksgiving shopping holiday.
The charter franchise of the NFL had never fired a head coach during the season before. But Eberflus left them no choice but to take immediate action. Thomas Brown, who has been the offensive coordinator for the last three games since Eberflus fired Shane Waldron, is the new head coach
This was the right decision. It would have been cruel for the Bears to keep trotting out Eberflus to face the media, like they did Friday morning when he had to meet reporters on Zoom and express confidence that he’d keep his job this season.
“I had several conversations with (Ryan Poles and Kevin Warren).”
Matt Eberflus when asked if he had conversations with Bears brass regarding his job. pic.twitter.com/hJY62Aml2T
— Marquee Bears (@BearsMarquee) November 29, 2024
It would’ve been unfair to the players not to hold Eberflus accountable. They have been casting shade on him for more than a month now by publicly and loudly second-guessing his coaching decisions.
As the clock hit zero in Detroit, sending the Bears to a 23-20 loss with the entire football-watching country screaming at him to call a timeout, it also marked the end of his time in Chicago.
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For the fourth time in a six-game losing streak, the Bears lost on the last play of the game, and this coaching mistake was so egregious that something abnormal had to be done.
Every loss, it seemed there was a new “insult stat” that showed how hapless the Bears were as a team under Eberflus, even with Williams showing real promise amid the normal growing pains of a rookie quarterback.
So it’s fitting that there was one final one for the Eberflus “era” in that he’s the first Bears coach to lose his job before the season ends.
But the Bears’ problems go way beyond Eberflus.
The hire itself was underwhelming and indicative of the charter franchise’s self-imposed, small-time identity. Bears GM Ryan Poles should have fired Eberflus last offseason and taken a swing at bringing back Jim Harbaugh.
But no one with any sense of reality was surprised that didn’t happen because Harbaugh is too big of a personality for Halas Hall. Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson would’ve made sense and he still makes sense for next season and beyond.
By putting off this firing, the Bears subjected Williams to their tradition of incompetence, which means he’ll be on his second head coach and probably his third offensive coordinator in his second season in the NFL. This is the third straight time a Bears rookie quarterback has lost his head coach after his first season.
Who knows how long Poles will last, but his next hire has to have the personality and the coaching chops to lead this franchise out of the hinterlands and into the spotlight. Well, to be fair, the Bears are currently front and center in the NFL conversation, but for the wrong reasons.
Poles has to be the guy making bold decisions because we know leadership won’t come from above.
Bears chairman George McCaskey is a better Little League umpire than owner. Since taking over as the head McCaskey for the 2011 season, the Bears have been mostly irrelevant, except for one very good season, one great trade and multiple seasons in which they were a league-wide punchline.
Poles is his fourth GM (counting Jerry Angelo, whom he fired after one season), and the next coach will be the sixth of McCaskey’s reign of incompetence.
It starts at the top.
Since George McCaskey became the Bears’ chairman in 2011, the Bears have fired 3 GMs, 5 head coaches and 3 OCs. In 14 seasons, they have 2 winning seasons, 2 playoff berths, zero playoff wins and a 93-130 record (.417) to show for it, so …
— Mark Potash (@MarkPotash) November 29, 2024
As for new team president Kevin Warren, who is sure to have a major say in the next coach, he’s bumbled his only job: getting the team a new stadium. They had a deal in place in Arlington Heights when he got hired and Warren has done everything he can to slow that process while trying to keep the Bears in the city. I’m not against that concept, but it doesn’t fit with the reality that the team already owns land to build a new stadium. You just can’t trust Warren to make a good decision.
So it’s up to Poles, who is living off his lopsided trade win over the Carolina Panthers two years ago. He didn’t shine in his job when he selected Eberflus, so it remains to be seen if he’ll make the right hire this time. I’m not optimistic.
We don’t know yet what he’s looking for in a new coach because he didn’t address the media Friday. In a classic case of Bears dysfunction, Eberflus was the only person who spoke for the franchise on Friday and that was two hours before he learned he was fired. The poor guy expressed confidence that he’d be the Bears coach this week and stressed that it was business as usual at Halas Hall.
Poles and Warren were quoted in a news release but neither addressed the media or the fans. I assume they’ll talk soon, but transparency is the least of their worries.
Firing Eberflus allows Poles and his front office to start vetting candidates for what’s likely to be a busy coaching market.
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Brown, the acting coach, is too green to be considered for anything more than a cursory interview. The aforementioned Johnson and his co-worker, Detroit defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, should be at the top of Poles’ list, along with other hot coordinators like Liam Coen (Tampa Bay) and Bobby Slowik (Houston). Former head coaches like Mike Vrabel, an assistant with Cleveland this season, and Brian Flores, the Vikings defensive coordinator, have to garner serious consideration. Bill Belichick, sure, but let’s be real. I don’t think this franchise could handle Vrabel, let alone his old coach.
Focusing only on hotshot offensive coordinators because of Williams would be a mistake. Poles needs to find a real leader who can do a holistic job running the entire franchise. Plenty of defensive coordinators have gone on to run teams with successful offenses. Like that Belichick guy, for instance.
But knowing how the Bears work, they’ll hire whichever offensive coordinator does the worst coaching job in the wild-card games, and we’ll be right back here in a few years going through the cursed numbers and wondering how the next guy can fix the endemic issues that plague this haunted franchise.
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(Photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
