On the eve of Matt Eberflus’ second season, his boss defined progress in three words.
“Win more games,” Bears general manager Ryan Poles said in August.
Not all games are created equal. Sunday, the Bears coach got his most meaningful victory of the season: a 28-13 win against the Lions at Soldier Field. The 5-8 Bears pummeled the NFC’s third-ranked team and clear class of the NFC North. In doing so, Eberflus posted the first winning streak if his head coaching career and exorcised the horrors of the Bears’ last meeting with the Lions, when they turned a 12-point lead into a five-point loss in less than five minutes.
To have a chance to stay on as head coach next year, Eberflus needed to gain momentum over the final stanza of the season. Sunday’s win is merely a first step — or rather, after a Week 12 win against the Vikings, a second step. It would have been almost impossible to claim progress the rest of the season without winning Sunday, though. He needs to keep winning to have a chance.
Bears brass will have to ask themselves myriad other questions about Eberflus — do they want him and his staff developing a quarterback if they pick one No. 1 overall? — but he’s shown them that, at least, the team is best at what the coach does best. Matt Nagy couldn’t ever say that.
In front of a bundled-up crowd of 62,185 on the lakefront — many were wearing Honolulu blue — Eberflus’ defense dispatched the Lions’ offense in the second half Sunday.
A unit that entered Sunday ranking fourth in both passing and rushing yards per game ended their first three drives of the second half three-and-out, then watched as quarterback Jared Goff fumbled the snap with 36 seconds left in the third quarter.
The Bears stuffed the Lions on downs all three times they had the ball in the fourth quarter — first by tackling Jahmyr Gibbs for a loss of four on a fourth-and-1 counter play and then forcing a fourth-and-17 incompletion. The final prayer — fourth-and-24with 2:44 to play — was picked off by linebacker Tremaine Edmunds. It marked the Bears’ third takeaway of the game and the 11th in their last three.
