Matt Eberflus isn’t the first Chicago Bears head coach to lose a locker room. Matt Nagy did so towards the end of his tenure. Marc Trestman had arguably the most spectacular one in 2014. However, Eberflus gave him a run for his money. For the fourth time in less than two months, a brutal late-game decision by the head coach cost the Bears a chance at a win. It’s one thing if the team were bad, but the Bears were 4-2 not too long ago. To see a promising season pissed away because the head coach can’t hold his water in crunch time was the final straw for several players. None more so than Jaylon Johnson.
The Pro Bowl cornerback has experienced nothing but losing since his arrival in 2020. This season was supposed to be different. They have talent on both sides of the ball. Quarterback Caleb Williams has kept them in games with his excellent 4th quarter play. They should be better than this, but the head coach has ensured that isn’t the case. Johnson was asked to explain his side of the story of what happened in the locker room after the loss in Detroit on Spiegel & Holmes.
“I’m used to winning, used to playing the game at a high level, and I haven’t done that since I’ve been in a Bears uniform. For me, just expressing that frustration. It hasn’t been a lack of talent. Especially this year. It’s not a lack of talent. It’s not any of those things where I can just say, ‘Well, we have a bad team, a bad roster.’ It’s just little things, certain situations, a certain way of losing that really hurts, and it just got to a point where I was fed up…
…Guys get fired all the time – players, coach, GM. It happens. I don’t necessarily feel like I was just some major part that played a role in getting [Eberflus] fired. That’s not on me. But at the end of the day, there was frustration. There were words from myself that I expressed just from my frustration of losing. Part of what I said after the game is I’ve been losing for five years. So, I mean, I feel like a high-level player like myself, after a certain point, losing games how we’ve been losing games, someone has to express something. It was one of those situations where it just got to that point where you don’t remember everything that was said.”
There wasn’t a single lie in those statements. He echoed what many in the locker room feel: This team is talented enough to hang with the best in the NFL. They proved it the past three weeks by taking the Packers, Vikings, and Lions to the wire. The key difference in each of those games was the gulf in the quality of head coaches. Matt Lafleur, Kevin O’Connell, and Dan Campbell are miles ahead of Eberflus. That realization set in more and more for Bears players. Yet they knew they couldn’t say anything for fear of being labeled a malcontent.
Somebody had to say something to snap Bears management out of their stupor. Jaylon Johnson chose to become that guy. Whether he wants to admit it or not, the cornerback’s tirade could be a major turning point in franchise history. It woke ownership up enough to do something it never has, which is fire a head coach midseason. If the Bears can get the next hire right, history will look back on Johnson’s explosion as a moment that set the organization on the right path.
