The best time for the Chicago Bears to fire head coach Matt Eberflus was in January 2024, after he plodded his way to a middling 7-10 record as the organization set itself up to draft Caleb Williams in April. The next best time to fire Matt Eberflus is … right now after the Bears clearly quit on the overmatched coach in an embarrassing 29-9 loss against the Arizona Cardinals because he almost always throws them under the bus in public for his mistakes.
The worst and most predictable time to fire Eberflus will be on Monday, January 6, 2025, when the Bears let this glorified football doofus get another nine games to recklessly damage Williams’ future because the NFL’s charter franchise values not firing coaches midseason as some perverse badge of pride.
If the Bears have any self-respect left and want the Williams era to be bright, competitive, and filled with glorious success in winter after winter, it’s time to swallow the bitter pill and send Eberflus packing.
Chicago leadership cannot let a man who thinks like this (note: Williams was under siege behind an awful offensive line all game in Arizona) to continue coaching their team:
Matt Eberflus says the reason why Caleb Williams was in the game late down 20 was to get work in and get timing in for the 2-minute operation. #Bears
— Zack Pearson (@Zack_Pearson) November 4, 2024
They’ll deny it in public with their words, but Bears players made their opinion on the Eberflus matter very clear with their actions after a devastating Hail Mary loss last weekend. By turning in a pitiful effort from top to bottom against the Cardinals, the Bears showed they were done with Eberflus offering empty, vapid platitudes from the jump.
Where do I even begin? (Takes a deep breath.)
The Bears committed not one but two penalties on Arizona field goal attempts, one of which gifted the Cardinals a fresh set of downs and led to a touchdown. Nothing is more undisciplined in football than special teams penalties that give the opposition a clean slate. The Bears did it twice. Strike one. For a coach whose calling card is effort and defense, Arizona’s offense ran through the Bears like melted butter to the tune of 213 team rushing yards. The Bears, even without Pro Bowl defensive end Montez Sweat, have roughly a gajillion dollars and high-end draft picks invested in their defense.
So, you tell me if that rushing defense is effort or talent? Strike two.
Don’t worry. It gets worse. It just keeps going.
Entering their matchup, the Cardinals had one of the NFL’s worst defenses. (Just like the Washington Commanders last week.) You’d never know it while watching the Bears and Williams fail to establish any discernible rhythm for three hours. The game plan, in this regard, was even worse. Cole Kmet went from a Pro Bowl-caliber tight end dominating the middle of the field a few weeks ago to one total target in his last two games. Meanwhile, the ghost of Keenan Allen is still tracking down aimless deep passes somewhere that he can’t reach anymore on another unfathomable target in his direction. If not for his ankle injury, I’d also estimate that Williams was still waiting for any Bears receiver, any at all, to come back to the ball on scramble drills he’s forced to induce behind his patchwork offensive line. Strike three.
If this general malaise wasn’t enough, the Bears gave up the longest end-of-half touchdown run this millennium. Strike … four?
Dearest readers, that sort of thing doesn’t happen unless a team stops playing:
This is the longest rush TD given up in the last 30 seconds of a half this century, which, lol pic.twitter.com/685J6LFSij
— Benjamin Solak (@BenjaminSolak) November 3, 2024
In mid-October, this Bears season had potential. Chicago looked like a dark horse NFC contender. Williams was a world-beater, and as a rookie, no less. An elite defense laden with talent was firing on all cylinders. Then Eberflus botched a Hail Mary defensive strategy in the worst way possible before taking zero sincere accountability for his failure in a fashion that incensed his locker room.
His players responded in kind: they “quiet quit” and threatened to tank all of the good vibes of a once-promising season now being taken out to pasture.
As my friend Christian D’Andrea puts it, the parallels to ex-Bears coach Matt Nagy once losing his mind over the “Double Doink” are too much to ignore:
The cold comfort for Chicago is every loss takes them closer to the end of the Eberflus era, closing the door on a head coach who never quite seemed to grasp the gravity his job entailed. Nagy had the Double Doink. Eberflus had the world’s worst Hail Mary defense. Barring an unlikely turnaround, that will be his legacy.
The Bears cannot pretend to care about winning if they let Eberflus continue this charade any longer. The crux of the matter is he likely ended any positive potential for his head-coaching career the moment Noah Brown caught that touchdown in Washington, D.C.
For the sake of any part of Chicago’s still-good roster, it’s time to send Eberflus to the unemployment line.
