Not long after he accepted the Bears’ head coaching job Thursday morning, Matt Eberflus called his mentor Gary Pinkel, the former Missouri coach. On the most important day of his professional life, Eberflus told Pinkel how much he meant to him.
It reminded Pinkel of the conversations he used to have with the coach who changed his own life, late Washington legend Don James. When he made the College Football Hall of Fame earlier this month, Pinkel called James’ widow and was so emotional that she had to be the one to comfort him.
Pinkel played for James and then coached under him at two stops. Eberflus did the same under Pinkel, playing his senior year for his first-time head coach at Toledo and then staying to coach under him. When Pinkel left for Missouri, Eberflus went too, becoming one of the nation’s youngest defensive coordinators at 30.
“It was a very emotional conversation …” Pinkel said. “I tend to see the same thing when [Eberflus] sits there and tells me some of the things he told me. It’s kinda overwhelming on both sides. I’m putting a sticker up for Don James because that’s where it all started. I’m ready to pass the baton on. Down the road here, Matt Eberflus might very well, possibly, be doing the same thing 10 years from now. It’s pretty exciting.”
But first, he’s got to coach his first game in the NFL. Eberflus, 51, has never been a head coach at any level, much less at the pinnacle of the sport. The Bears are betting that he grows into the role alongside 36-year-old general manager Ryan Poles, who was hired two days before the coach.
“I think he can handle the heat and the pressure,” Pinkel said. “Every head coach can say he handles pressure well. They’re lying — 60, 70 percent of them actually don’t cope with it. Eventually it doesn’t allow them to do their job. He will stay poised.”
When Pinkel accepted the Toledo job in 1991, he stopped by the Washington football office to say goodbye to James on the way to the airport. As he was leaving, he turned around and asked James if he had any advice.
James took his glasses off and stared at him coldly.
“He said, ‘When things get down — and, he said, it’s gonna really really get tough — you gotta focus every day on waking up and doing your job minute-by-minute,” Pinkel said. “‘You can’t let anything in. Because if you let anything in, you’re never gonna make it.’ …
“It was the greatest advice I’ve ever had in my life. You gotta be able to handle that part of it. I think [Eberflus] will do well.”
Why?
“There’s no question who the boss is — it doesn’t deviate,” Pinkel said. “But at the end of the day he’s a good person that cares about people. … You want players to get committed? They’re not going to get committed until they know you care about them. Not gonna happen. That’s the way he will be, because that’s the way he is with people. I don’t care who it is, he’s going to demand excellence.”
Pinkel envisions Eberflus combining college and pro tenets — he was a linebackers coach for the Browns and Cowboys before spending the last four years as the Colts defensive coordinator — to “create his environment of commitment and work ethic and being a great teammate.” Andy Reid, he said, has established that kind of culture in Kansas City.
Eberflus will borrow from the coaches he’s played and coached under: Pinkel, the Cowboys’ Jason Garrett, the Browns’ Eric Mangini, the Colts’ Frank Reich and even Nick Saban, who coached him his junior year at Toledo.
Pinkel said he noticed something special about Eberflus in his first year as Toledo’s head coach. Before his senior year, Eberflus told Pinkel he might want to be a college coach one day. The former walk-on and Toledo native was the best player on the Rockets that season — he was voted captain and won team MVP — and then jumped into coaching. He was a Toledo student assistant and a graduate assistant for a year apiece, and joined the Rockets full-time in 1994.
“And as he matured more,” Pinkel said, “it was really interesting to see him grow.”
Eberflus was intense as a player and has that streak as a coach, too.
“He has what you have to have,” he said. “I believed in him.”
Pinkel knows defensive-minded coaches need help in the modern NFL, though.
“The offensive staff is going to be really important,” Pinkel said. “The coordinator, quarterbacks coach, offensive line coach — those guys are key, key people. I think he understands that.
“A lot more offensive coordinators get hired [as head coaches] in this business — we all know why — than defensive coordinators. I think he’s excited by the plan that he has to get the right people to the right spots. I think that’s critically important.”
Pinkel thinks he’s ready. We’ll find out soon enough.
“He’s just really excited for this,” Pinkel said. “He’s been waiting for so long to have this opportunity.”
