Dave Wannstedt went 4-12 in 1998 and from 3-5 in 1998 to 3-11. The Chicago Bears didn’t fire him midseason. Dick Jauron followed a 13-3 season in 2001 by going 4-12 in 2002. The Bears didn’t fire him midseason. Marc Trestman lost to the Packers 55-14 on national television in 2014 and had a highly public feud with quarterback Jay Cutler. The Bears didn’t fire him midseason. So you can understand why plenty of people are skeptical the organization would break a tradition stretching back over a century for Matt Eberflus.
However, the head coach seems dead set on making it happen. His latest debacle in Detroit may have been the final straw. The Bears were just outside field goal range with 32 seconds left. A sack of Caleb Williams created 3rd and long. There was obvious confusion on offense as the QB waited for a play. Any sane coach would’ve called timeout. Eberflus did not. As a result, the Bears only ran one more play, which was an incomplete pass. They never even got to attempt the field goal. It was the most incredible meltdown a head coach has had in recent memory.
According to top team insiders Bill Zimmerman and Jeff Hughes, it also may have finally convinced ownership to break their long-standing tradition.
Players are fed up. They know Eberflus is holding them back with his constant ineptitude in pressure situations. He has now squandered four 4th quarter comebacks led by Williams, with his defense being directly responsible for two of them and special teams another. That timeout fiasco was the latest and, by far, the worst of his sins. Never mind that he is now 2-12 against the NFC North, 5-19 in one-score games, and has a .304 winning percentage, which is the third-worst in franchise history.
Even his vaunted defense has regressed to the middle of the pack this season. They’re still decent, but nowhere near the top 10 unit they were earlier this season and especially last season. What justification is left for keeping him in charge? The Chicago Bears are completely out of the playoff picture. The locker room is beginning to boil over. Eberflus has no ground left to stand on. The only thing stopping this from happening is a tradition literally no one cares about but the McCaskey family.
It’s time to put that to rest.
