MINNEAPOLIS — Since a season-opening loss to the Packers flattened the Bears’ high expectations, it has felt as though coach Matt Eberflus is on the brink, tiptoeing the line at which any rational organization would fire him while losses accumulated and any thought of this team making good on its playoff aspirations vanished quickly.
He didn’t gain any margin Monday. At least he won, but Eberflus’ Bears escaped with an ugly 12-10 win over a meandering Vikings team that was playing with a turnover-prone backup quarterback in Josh Dobbs and without star wide receiver Justin Jefferson.
The defense lapsed late, allowing a 77-yard touchdown drive as the Vikings went up 10-9 with six minutes left, and the offense went from feeble to fumbling before scrambling for the winning field goal at the end. Imagine where the Bears would be without Cairo Santos, who made a 30-yarder to win it with 13 seconds remaining.
“The last part of it was good,” Eberflus said.
It took a desperate final drive, and it took until past Thanksgiving, but the Bears finally eclipsed their win total from last season in getting to 4-8.
But was anyone convinced enough by this to throw out what they’ve seen over Eberflus’ first season and a half? Did it make anyone forget what happened just eight days earlier against the Lions?
Eberflus still has the worst record of any coach in Bears history at 7-22, and this was his lone win in the NFC North at a time when the entire division has been rebuilding to some extent. If team president Kevin Warren and general manager Ryan Poles were to ask him to point to a signature victory, he couldn’t. This definitely wasn’t it.
But there sure have been some signature losses this season, such as the botched endings against the Lions and Broncos and the total humiliation against the Chiefs.
Beating the Vikings should have been easier as Dobbs threw four interceptions on his way to a 22-for-32 passing game, 185 yards and a 54.3 passer rating. And any frustrations with offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, which have swirled around him since Day 1, should be aimed at Eberflus.
“We would like to capitalize on those,” Eberflus said of the Bears’ four takeaways leading to just three points. “That’s what momentum is. We have to do a better job of that.”
When Eberflus took the job after a career exclusively in defense, he said he knew he’d be just as responsible for the offense. He picked Getsy and signs off on his game plans. But Eberflus would have trouble listing concrete accomplishments. He keeps hammering “championship habits” that have yet to materialize, and the Bears are hardly a reflection of his H.I.T.S. philosophy.
The Bears play hard, but that’s a bare-minimum request. They’ve been a middling team in terms of getting takeaways, the most tangible trait Eberflus promised to instill, and they’ve committed the fourth-most penalties.
When the Bears self-sabotage, it’s no surprise. That’s a broad problem, and broad problems trace back to the coach.
It was classic Bears, for example, when cornerback Jaylon Johnson intercepted a pass in the second quarter and they dragged themselves out of scoring territory with unforced errors. Johnson returned the pick to the Vikings’ 37-yard line, but cornerback Kyler Gordon was flagged for taunting, and the Bears began at their own 48 instead. Predictably, they kept going backward until they punted. It would be a different conversation if these were aberrations, but under Eberflus, the team has consistently underwhelmed.
One of the biggest things he has in his favor is that the Bears are historically too patient — a characteristic that theoretically would have changed upon Warren’s arrival. Warren was hired to do more than build a stadium and claims he has the expertise to evaluate the on-field product. It’s hard to imagine Eberflus’ work has met his standards.
