On Monday, Matt Eberflus looked and sounded like the coach of a team mired in a four-game losing streak that included four events that will live forever in the Bears’ Hall of Shame (three for sure) — the 52-yard Hail Mary against the Commanders, Emari Demercado’s 53-yard touchdown with four seconds left in the first half against the Cardinals, the 19-3 loss to the 2-7 Patriots as six-point home favorites and Cairo Santos’ potential game-winning 46-yard field goal getting blocked in a 20-19 loss to the Packers.
You can’t blame Eberflus for accentuating the positive even as this season swirls down the drain; that’s his job.
“Offense really had a spark and looking forward to getting the game plan going for this week, moving on to Minnesota,” Eberflus said. “The guys were all positive in our team meeting. I showed them the sequencing of the first half — playing complementary football there . . . how we exhausted the time in scoring a touchdown at the end after the interception.”
But literally without skipping a beat, the beleaguered Eberflus transitioned to the — all-too-familiar — grasping-at-straws phase of a coach who appears to be closer to the end than the beginning.
“And I also think it’s good complementary football at the end of the game,” Eberflus continued. “I know we gave up the big pass, but we ended up stopping the two-point conversion and then obviously coming back [and] having a chance to win at the very end.”
Wait, what? The Bears’ sequence at the end of the game was almost the opposite of complementary football. One phase succeeded, and the other two failed. The defense allowed a 60-yard pass from Jordan Love to Christian Watson that set up a touchdown that gave the Packers the lead. Special teams had an even more massive failure — allowing Santos’ field goal to be blocked.
Applauding the Bears for stopping the two-point conversion after Love’s one-yard sneak is giving the defense credit for making the most of its own mistake. That’s like giving Eberflus credit for promoting Thomas Brown to replace Shane Waldron.
Therein lies the fear of many Bears fans heading into the last seven games of the season — that Brown’s success in developing rookie quarterback Caleb Williams and the offense will give general manager Ryan Poles a lifeline to throw to Eberflus after the season.
It’s like last year when Eberflus’ steadying his own rocking ship was Poles’ rationale for keeping him instead of hiring an offensive coach in sync with a rookie quarterback.
A year later, the bar has to be raised a lot higher. If the Bears beat the odds and rally to finish 9-8 — starting with the game Sunday against the Vikings at Soldier Field — Eberflus’ contribution has to be more than promoting Brown to replace Waldron. He has to be the reason they win. He has to be better on game day. The Bears not only have to win for Eberflus to survive, they have to be well-coached from the top down. His success has to come from something other than failure.
It would take an about-face for that to happen, frankly. Eberflus is like the Velus Jones of the coaching staff — a guy Poles liked a little more than everybody else, a bit of an impulsive hire where Poles trusted his intuition and ability to project success, a guy with many qualities that make a good coach but don’t necessarily fit the position he was hired for.
The Bears gave Jones every chance to succeed and believed in him until they didn’t. Eventually he had to have more than speed, just like Eberflus has to be more than a guy who keeps the ship afloat. Again, he has to be the reason the Bears win.