When Bears interim head coach Thomas Brown welcomes players back to Halas Hall on Monday after their weekend off, his first order of business will be to stabilize the organization after a chaotic, jarring few days.
The final game of former coach Matt Eberflus’ brief tenure ended haphazardly Thursday as he botched clock management in a 23-20 loss to the Lions, and the fallout wasn’t much smoother.
Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams was visibly angry after Eberflus’ failure to call timeout cost the team a chance to at least tie the game, but remained diplomatic afterward by saying only that he didn’t believe it was his decision as an inexperienced player and he leaves those calls up to Eberflus.
Things weren’t quite so civil in the visiting locker room at Ford Field, and one player said Eberflus’ post-game address about “sticking together” was derailed as players vented frustration at “an all-time high” level. The organization’s power players, including president Kevin Warren, chief administrative officer Ted Crews and general manager Ryan Poles, saw all of it.
“Guys were [ticked] off,” one player said. “I can tell you what we think: It’s not the talent.”
Eberflus wouldn’t concede that the week before, and when asked why this roster kept losing, he pivoted to a line about needing to “look forward and… look upward.”
Those canned answers grew tiresome with the public and within Halas Hall.
Minutes after blowing yet another game in the final seconds was not the time for another one. The same old speech about hanging tough and moving forward, essentially a repeat of what Eberflus had said after every loss in the six-game losing streak that pushed Poles to fire him, fell flat.
Tight end Cole Kmet pointed out that he and cornerback Jaylon Johnson, who arrived together as rookies in 2020, have heard nothing but that during their careers.
“You only want to hear it so much,” Kmet said. “We want the results.”
There was a prevailing opinion in the locker room that the Bears’ defeats were self-inflicted and, as one player put it relative to Eberflus, “That’s the problem.” The Athletic cited a player saying Johnson “went crazy” at Eberflus after the game and most or all of the locker room was on his side.
Eberflus was under scrutiny in all six losses. He misplayed the end of the Commanders game and failed to notice cornerback Tyrique Stevenson’s wandering attention, then dragged the story throughout the next week by refusing to say something definitive about consequences. Not surprisingly, the Bears looked unready for their ensuing game against the Cardinals, and a bad defensive call by Eberflus at the end of the spirit knocked any remaining wind out of them.
They came home and lost 19-3 to the Patriots, the worst team in the NFL at the time, then rallied to give themselves a shot at upending the Packers for the first time in six years only for Eberflus to forfeit the option of trying to gain a few more yards and settling for a 46-yard field goal that got blocked.
He had an epic error against the Vikings in which miscommunication led to the kicking team running onto the field when the offense was preparing to go for it on fourth down, and then the debacle in Detroit.
Throughout, the Bears were impressed by Eberflus clearing the relatively low bar of having the team refocused and reenergized by the following Wednesday to begin the practice week. Management was skeptical, however, that he could keep that going, a source said.
That doubt grew too big to ignore after the embarrassing ending against the Lions. While things already were stacked against Eberflus coming back in 2025, a source said, had Rome Odunze caught Williams’ final pass and scored the game-winning touchdown, it would’ve been a step in the right direction and Eberflus would’ve survived for at least another game.
While Warren, Poles and chairman George McCaskey surely had a lot of thoughts about Eberflus on Thursday, they did not meet to discuss his future until Friday at 7:30 a.m. at Halas Hall. Poles was furious with Eberflus’ mishandling of the ending, a source said, and preferred to calm down and have a conversation free of emotion.
The three most powerful people in the organization met for three hours, unconcerned at the time that Eberflus was scheduled to hold his day-after-game news conference at 9 a.m. on Zoom. He logged on unaware that he would be fired within two hours and perhaps unaware of the meeting.
It was a bad look for the Bears, who made the right decision but executed it the wrong way. It could’ve been avoided merely by changing his schedule and making up a reason for the public, but a source said there was little attention given to that. There was total preoccupation with making a decision.
It was Poles’ call, and Warren said in a statement he supported it. It was not a tough sell to McCaskey to break from the franchise’s 105-year tradition of not firing a coach in-season, a source said.
In the meeting, there were three key points 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-costing decisions, the locker room was bailing on him and there no longer was any chance of bringing him back next season. If that was the conclusion, no sense in delaying it.
There also was concern about missteps with offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, whom he fired after nine games amid player complaints, and his ability to guide Williams. The Athletic reported that some players floated the idea of benching him in favor of Tyson Bagent after the loss to the Patriots, but two sources told the Sun-Times there was no call to bench Williams and such a move would be nonsensical.
After Eberflus was informed of his dismissal, he relayed that and said goodbye to his staff in a quick meeting, and management reached out to team captains to spread the word. It was all over by noon.
Eberflus released a statement to CBS on Saturday thanking Poles and the McCaskey family and praising the players.
“I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the players for all of their effort, dedication and resilience,” he said. “In every situation — practice, games and especially in the face of adversity, you stayed together and gave great effort for your team and each other.”
He added that he was “most proud of… the way you carried yourself both on and off the field and represented the Bears’ organization with class in the community,” and thanked Bears fans for their “support and passion.”
That passion was loud near the end, when fans at Soldier Field chanted for Eberflus to be fired and booed him repeatedly. Warren said they “deserve better results” than what they got from a coach who went 14-32.