It’d be nice if the Bears ever made this part of the season meaningful, rather than it being merely a time for the drama over who’s getting fired to rise to a crescendo leading into mid-January.
Some teams actually keep playing games deep into January. That’s referred to as the playoffs.
But with the Bears, there’s always what should be and what actually is. And, as is too often the case, the current blueprint and power structure at Halas Hall is fully in question heading into the final five games, starting Sunday at home against the Lions.
Here’s who’s staying: Chairman George McCaskey and team president Kevin Warren.
Everyone else is subject to scrutiny, and possibly change.
General manager Ryan Poles, based on the moderately improved roster and what Warren has consistently said about him, is likely to be back. Coach Matt Eberflus probably won’t compare well as Warren and Poles consider upgrades. Offensive coordinator Luke Getsy is a longshot. Quarterback Justin Fields also would have to climb a mountain to convince the Bears.
Can five games, the last four against middling or bad opponents, flip the narrative for anybody?
Eberflus is 7-22 with a string of off-field stumbles and declined Monday to directly answer a question about whether he believed his job was “safe” beyond this season. He pivoted instead to saying he needed to “put your best foot forward every day” amid uncertainty.
“You’ve just gotta just keep working and grinding and executing and getting the guys to focus and wire in,” Eberflus said. “Being positive, also being real with the players, so they can improve. And the same way with your staff... So that’s no different this year than any other year.”
It’s very different, though. No one called for his firing when the Bears went 3-14 last season. But this season there were playoff expectations, and his team is fifth-worst in the NFL after a 2-7 start.
Still, McCaskey was overly patient with Matt Nagy and might be with Eberflus. If the Bears keep him despite that being incredibly unpopular publicly, Getsy would be the obvious scapegoat.
And then there’s Fields, nearing the end of his third season and yet to prove concretely he’s on his way to being a championship-caliber quarterback. If the Bears are still asking if he’s the franchise quarterback, they basically have their answer.
None of these decisions should be delayed. There’s urgency to plot a prudent path for the Bears’ future. It’s all time sensitive.
ESPN calculated a 93% chance of them getting a top-two draft pick via the Panthers, and their own pick is near-certain to be top-10. That’s a rare opportunity — especially at quarterback — they don’t expect to have again.
The pressure is heightened by Warren, an outsider who came in this year adamant that he wouldn’t tolerate the same old, same old. This is his first major evaluation of the football hierarchy, and he said he has the expertise to make those calls rather than call a consultant like Ernie Accorsi or Bill Polian.
There’s also the mounting weight of wasted time. The Bears have put their customers through five seasons of irrelevance. There’s been little reason to watch the last two other than out of habit.
They got here in large part because they’ve continued to build backwards, from the ground up rather than from the top down. They drafted Fields in 2021, brought in Eberflus and Poles (the order there is murky) in 2022, then hired Warren this year.
If that sounds familiar, it’s similar to the way Nagy ended up coaching Mitch Trubisky.
And it’ll happen again if the Bears stay in that cycle. So Warren must either clean house entirely, or unequivocally attach himself to Poles as his partner going forward. Then those two can work together to put pieces in place underneath them. The Bears have to break their pattern if they want to have meaningful Decembers.
