Insights into the Matt Eberflus firing: As the losses mounted and the message faltered, the Bears couldn’t take it anymore

When Bears interim coach Thomas Brown welcomes the players back to Halas Hall on Monday following their weekend off, his first task will be to stabilize the organization after a chaotic, harrowing few days.

The final game of former coach Matt Eberflus’ brief tenure ended haphazardly on Thursday when he botched time management in a 23-20 loss to the Lions, and the aftermath didn’t go much smoother.

Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams was visibly upset after Eberflus’ failure to call a timeout cost the team a chance to tie the game, but remained diplomatic afterward, saying only that he didn’t think it was his decision as an inexperienced player player, and these calls went all the way to Eberflus.

Things in the visiting locker room at Ford Field were less than polite, and one player said Eberflus’ postgame speech about “sticking together” was derailed as players vented their frustration “at an all-time high.”

“The boys were ticked off,” said one player. “I can tell you what we think: It’s not the talent.”

Eberflus didn’t want to admit that the week before, and when asked why this squad kept losing, he resorted to saying that they need to “look forward and… look up.”

These canned answers became increasingly boring in public and in Halas Hall.

Minutes after another game failed in the final seconds, there was no time for another. The same old talk of staying tough and moving forward, essentially a repeat of what Eberflus had said after every defeat in the six-game losing streak that led the Poles to sack him, failed.

Tight end Cole Kmet pointed out that he and cornerback Jaylon Johnson, who came together as rookies in 2020, have heard nothing other than that throughout their careers.

“You just want to hear it so bad,” Kmet said. “We want the results.”

The prevailing feeling in the locker room was that the Bears’ losses were self-inflicted, and as one player put it regarding Eberflus, “That’s the problem.” The athletic one quoted one player saying Johnson “went crazy” after the Eberflus game and that most or all of the locker room was on his side.

Eberflus was under scrutiny in all six defeats. He misplayed the end of the Commanders game and missed cornerback Tyrique Stevenson’s wandering attention. He then dragged the story out throughout the next week by refusing to say anything definitive about the consequences. Unsurprisingly, the Bears didn’t seem ready for the following game against the Cardinals, and a poor defensive performance from Eberflus at the end of the first half stymied them.

They came home and lost 19-3 to the Patriots, then the worst team in the NFL, then rallied to give themselves a chance to upset the Packers for the first time in six years, but Eberflus missed the option to try to gain a few more yards and settle for a 46-yard field goal that was blocked.

Against the Vikings, he made an epic mistake on a crucial fourth down in which a miscommunication led to the kicking team running onto the field as the offense prepared to go, and then debacle ensued in Detroit.

The Bears were impressed throughout that Eberflus had overcome the relatively low hurdle of refocusing and re-energizing the team by the following Wednesday to begin the week of practice. However, management is skeptical about whether he can continue with it, a source said.

That doubt became too big to ignore after the embarrassing finish against the Lions. While things were already against Eberflus returning in 2025, a source said, it would have been a step in the right direction if Rome Odunze had caught Williams’ final pass and scored the game-winning touchdown, and Eberflus would have survived at least one more Game.

While Warren, Poles and Chairman George McCaskey certainly had a lot of thoughts about Eberflus on Thursday, it wasn’t until Friday at 7:30 a.m. that they met at Halas Hall to discuss his future. According to a source, Poles was angry at Eberflus’ mishandling of the ending and preferred to calm down and have an emotionless conversation.

The organization’s three most powerful people met for three hours, unconcerned with the time when Eberflus was scheduled to hold his 9 a.m. news conference on Zoom the day after the game. He signed up not knowing he would be fired within two hours and possibly unaware of the meeting.

Things looked bad for the Bears as they made the right decision but executed it incorrectly. It could have been avoided by simply changing his schedule and giving the public a reason for it, but a source said little attention was paid to it. You were completely preoccupied with making a decision.

It was the Poles’ call, and Warren said in a statement that he supported it. According to a source, it wasn’t difficult for McCaskey to break with the franchise’s 105-year tradition of not firing a coach during the season.

There were three key arguments at the meeting in favor of doing it now rather than waiting until January, as the Bears painfully did in a similar situation with Matt Nagy in 2021: Eberflus continued to make game-winning decisions that the locker room had to gave up on him and there was no chance of getting him back next season. If that were the conclusion, there would be no point in delaying it.

There were also concerns about missteps with offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, whom he fired after nine games due to player complaints, and his ability to guide Williams. The athletic one reported that after the loss to the Patriots, some players entertained the idea of ​​benching him in favor of Tyson Bagent, but two sources told the Sun-Times that there was no call to bench Williams, and that such a step would be senseless.

After being informed of his firing, Eberflus passed it on and said goodbye to his employees in a brief meeting, and management reached out to the team captains to spread the news. By midday it was all over.

Eberflus released a statement to CBS on Saturday thanking the Poles and the McCaskey family and praising the players.

“I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the players for all their effort, commitment and resilience,” he said. “In every situation – in training, in games and especially in the face of adversity – you stayed together and gave great commitment to your team and to each other.”

He added that he was “most proud of…the way you conducted yourself on and off the field and represented the Bears organization in the community with class,” and thanked Bears fans for their “support and passion”.

That passion was loud toward the end, as fans at Soldier Field called for Eberflus to be fired and repeatedly booed him. Warren said they “deserved better results” than the ones they got from a coach who went 14-32.