DETROIT — Matt Eberflus is done. His future as the Bears’ coach has been bleak for weeks, but there’s no coming back from the way he bungled the final sequence of the Bears’ 23-20 loss to the Lions on Thursday.
He threw away the Bears’ shot at tying or winning the game by doing nothing as the clock ran out with him still holding his last timeout. Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams felt he didn’t have the authority to use one in that scenario, leaving him completely — and hopelessly — dependent on Eberflus to manage the clock correctly.
Down 23-7 in the fourth quarter, Williams rallied the Bears and got his chance starting inside his 1-yard line on the last possession. He pushed the Bears as far as the Lions’ 13-yard line before everything unraveled.
He eventually got sacked at the Lions’ 41 with 32 seconds left, and the clock kept winding down while Eberflus watched. Williams got the Bears to the line of scrimmage with 13 seconds left and snapped the ball with six left.
He threw deep down the right side for Rome Odunze. The ball fell incomplete with no time on the clock as Lions players streamed onto the field. The bewildered Bears looked around, unaware that Eberflus botched their shot at a landmark comeback.
Unbelievably, or perhaps very believably if you’ve been listening to Eberflus explain his errors the last few weeks, he defended his inaction and said, “I like what we did there. . . . I think we handled it the right way.”
No one agreed. There were no perfect options, but anything was preferable to what happened. Even calling timeout and trying a 58-yard field goal was a better idea.
The Bears can’t keep going down this path.
The mood in the visiting locker room at Ford Field was decidedly resigned. If there was fury or shock, it didn’t show.
One player shook his head as he walked out the door and muttered, “[Expletive].” Another wondered flatly, “What the [expletive]?” A third was asked what he thinks will happen Friday at Halas Hall and said, “No idea.”
When asked if there was a common thread in their late collapses against the Commanders, Packers and now the Lions, cornerback Kyler Gordon said, “I don’t know. Next question. No comment.”
It’s time.
Ahead of the Lions game, the Bears had made no decision on Eberflus’ future, a source said.
The organization has a longstanding principle of not firing a head coach during the season, but Eberflus has forced it into a position where that move is on the table. It will be legitimately considered, and in the aftermath of his self-sabotage in the loss to Detroit, it’s the right call.
It won’t save the season. That’s over with. But the losses have mounted, the missteps have been egregious, the morale in the locker room has disintegrated and he won’t be coaching the Bears next season. There’s no point in another day under those circumstances.
“This is the NFL; I know where it is,” Eberflus said when asked if he was worried about losing his job. “I’m just going to put my best foot forward and keep grinding.”
When asked if he expects to stay on as coach for the next game, Eberflus said, “I’m just going to keep grinding and working. That’s what I do.”
He’s reached the, “Have you been fired yet?” stage of the season, just as Matt Nagy did in 2021. The Bears chose to further embarrass Nagy and themselves by trotting him out to a microphone several times a week when his firing was a foregone conclusion and became the laughingstocks of the league.
It’s supposed to be a new era under Poles and team president Kevin Warren. Poles couldn’t have said it more clearly the night he drafted Williams.
“The history’s the history,” he bristled in April. “I’m kind of done talking about it. . . . Those days are over. . . . It hasn’t been smooth recently, and it’s time to change.”
Then change. Be humane by sparing Eberflus the charade and sparing the players from working under unsuitable conditions.
The loss was Eberflus’ sixth in a row and dropped him to 14-32, the third-worst record by a Bears coach.
Even giving him a pass for going 3-14 in 2022 as Poles demolished the roster to begin the rebuild, Eberflus is 11-18 over the last two seasons, and the details are jarring: He’s 2-12 on the road, 2-7 in the NFC North and 1-13 against 2023 opponents that finished with a winning record and 2024 opponents that currently have one.
And the problems extend far beyond those results.
It was bad enough when Alan Williams, Eberflus’ longtime assistant, resigned as defensive coordinator early last season because of misconduct, but then Eberflus had to fire running backs coach David Walker for non-football reasons.
Then his rushed hiring of offensive coordinator Luke Getsy to begin his tenure backfired, and he fired him in January. Eberflus and Poles embarked on a wide-ranging search that led them to Shane Waldron.
With input from Poles, Warren and chairman George McCaskey, Eberflus fired Waldron nine games into the season and replaced him with passing-game coordinator Thomas Brown.
Eberflus seemed oblivious to problems on offense even as players vented about them early in the season. One week before firing Waldron, he was adamantly opposed to changing play-callers. When Brown improved the operation on his first day by making basic changes, the question was why Eberflus hadn’t demanded them sooner.
The answer, quite simply and indisputably, is that this job is more than he can handle.
