The Chicago Bears can’t get out of their own way, as they lost to the Detroit Lions in perplexing fashion on Thanksgiving Day.
The Lions defense sacked QB Caleb Williams with roughly 30 seconds remaining in the game to drop the Bears on the edge of field goal range. Instead of calling a timeout ahead of third-down-and-long, the offense slowly lined up, snapped the ball with a few seconds remaining and threw an incomplete pass to end the game.
Social media was ablaze with anger from Bears fans, laughter from Chicago haters and disbelief from NFL analysts at what can’t be factually described as anything other than jaw-dropping ineptitude on the part of head coach Matt Eberflus.
Eberflus was already on the hot seat coming into the game, with some suggesting the Bears should fire him before season’s end. Those calls grew significantly louder following the team’s third straight loss within the NFC North Division and sixth consecutive loss on the year.
“Matt Eberflus had a timeout, decides not to use it … time runs out while in field goal range,” the ML Football X account wrote. “One of the worst coaching decisions we have ever seen. He should be fired on the spot.”
Matt Eberflus Unites Internet in Time Management Criticism Against Lions
GettyHead coach Matt Eberflus of the Chicago Bears.
The criticisms of Eberflus were ubiquitous and seemingly all the same, uniting sports fans and personalities in their opinions in a way that is exceedingly rare in the modern social media landscap.
“Do timeouts carry over like cap space?” Mike Sando of The Athletic wrote sarcastically.
“Actually I was right,” Zac Jackson of The Athletic added. “Fire him immediately.”
“Just horrendous clock management,” one fan posted to X. “Matt Eberflus shouldn’t even make the flight home.”
“If there is any consolation for the Bears, it’s that their new head coach will have a better draft pick because of that horrendous decision,” another fan chimed in on X.
Bears Could Replace Matt Eberflus With Interim Offensive Coordinator Thomas Brown
GettyHead coach Matt Eberflus of the Chicago Bears.
Faith in Eberflus throughout the Bears fan base was already at an all-time low, and the fact that he made another obvious gaffe on Thanksgiving Day that cost the team yet another game reads like something out of a Hollywood script.
The comedy of errors that have careened into a tragedy for the Bears this season now seems more likely to end in Eberflus’s early termination after the time management fiasco in Detroit.
If Chicago decides to move on from Eberflus during the season, the only real choice is to elevate interim offensive coordinator Thomas Brown into an interim head coaching role. He began the season as the pass game coordinator for the team, and moving into the job of head coach by Week 13 would be a meteoric rise.
The justification for the move would be to see if Brown is ready for the big job before heading into the offseason, and if he isn’t, the Bears could consider other candidates once the year ends.
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