Bears president Kevin Warren and general manager Ryan Poles have talked a lot about moving the team out of the clumsiness and incompetence that marked much of its recent -history, but the last few days felt quite a bit like the same old Bears.
It’s a critical time for Warren and Poles to prove they’re running a serious operation when the chaotic firing of former coach Matt Eberflus, who spoke to reporters on a Zoom call Friday only to be fired soon after, and his overall tenure are evidence to the contrary.
The Bears’ job would be arguably the most desirable opportunity for top candidates in January — if it weren’t the Bears. That’s an image Warren and Poles must repair as much as possible, and it’ll be problematic if prospective coaches perceive them as dysfunctional.
The Bears were right to fire Eberflus but still got it wrong. Amid their deliberate approach, Warren, Poles and chairman George McCaskey waited until Friday morning to convene about Eberflus. They paid no mind to his scheduled news conference at 9 a.m., which should’ve been pushed back to avoid the embarrassing scene that ensued.
Eberflus, unaware exactly what was taking place elsewhere in his building as he logged onto Zoom, gave a recap of the loss to the Lions in which he mismanaged the clock and cost the Bears the game and talked about the upcoming game against the 49ers that he ultimately won’t be around for.
Then he opened it up for questions, and that’s when the Bears really looked bad and unnecessarily exposed Eberflus to further humiliation. The first three were all some version of, “Have you been fired yet?”
He gave no straight answers, because he couldn’t. It was the worst — and cruelest — time for the Bears to put him on a live microphone. Some in the organization regretted it, a source said, but there was no reversing the error.
The Bears opted against pushing back Eberflus’ call partly to avoid sounding alarms when the decision was still in limbo. But schedule changes aren’t that unusual, and it would’ve been easy to come up with a reason.
Alarms went off anyway. As the call neared and reporters hadn’t received a Zoom link, which usually is sent out well in advance, they posted on social media about the oddity. It finally came through two minutes after the scheduled start. More decisiveness by Poles and Warren would’ve averted the fiasco altogether.
Eberflus’ flub in the Lions game was hardly his first. He committed major mistakes in each of the six consecutive losses at the end of his tenure to drop his career record to 14-32, third-worst in the century-plus history of Bears coaches. And he already was a long shot to come back in 2025 before Thanksgiving, a source said.
One key question for Poles and Warren, who as of Sunday weren’t scheduled to speak to the media, would be why it took so long — both after the Lions loss and overall.
It would’ve been reasonable to fire Eberflus after the 19-3 home loss to the then league-worst Patriots on Nov. 10.
At that point, the Bears still hoped for a turnaround and hadn’t ruled out Eberflus pulling out of his nosedive, a source said. Instead, he botched the ending against the Packers the next week, followed with a stunning miscue against the Vikings on a critical fourth down, then squandered his chance against the Lions.
Had the Bears gone to interim coach Thomas Brown — or anyone else more capable than Eberflus — before those debacles, maybe they would’ve gotten different outcomes. If even two of those three losses flipped to wins, they would be 6-6 and still in reach of a playoff spot.
Poles could have made the move one week earlier if he’d seen trouble coming. After Eberflus’ mishandling of the ending against the Commanders and the needless weeklong circus around cornerback Tyrique Stevenson — who apparently respected Eberflus’ authority so little that he walked out of practice when informed he wouldn’t be starting the next game — the Bears were listless in a 29-9 loss to the Cardinals.
Player complaints, by the way, started back in September. There were so many warning signs that Poles and Warren either missed or pushed aside.
Going back even further, there was a sound argument for firing Eberflus after last season and resetting with an offensive-minded coach such as Ben Johnson or Kliff Kingsbury to pair with rookie quarterback Caleb Williams.
Poles acknowledged in an August interview with the Sun-Times that firing Eberflus then would’ve been “popular,” but he believed he’d seen sufficient progress in the second half of 2023, when the Bears’ defense improved and the team went 5-3 in the final eight games.
The asterisk is that four of those wins came against sub-.500 teams, and two of the losses came on staggering fourth-quarter collapses.
In the end, the Bears are once again in a mess of their own making. There are new people in charge, but the result looks the same. So who’s going to fix it?
Warren said when he took over he wouldn’t need to call someone like Bill Polian to come in and tell him what to do, as McCaskey and Ted Phillips required in 2021. Poles has said he’s done talking about and, presumably, repeating Bears history. McCaskey said he’d be hands-off once Warren arrived, but he’s obviously still involved given that he was part of the meeting to decide Eberflus’ fate and the one three weeks ago about former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
Who’s really in charge, and what’s the plan? The Bears need a clear and convincing answer to that question, because it’s the first one any coaching candidate will ask.