As brief as Shane Waldron’s stint with the Bears was, he had this coming for a long time.
The team fired Waldron as offensive coordinator Tuesday after just nine games and replaced him with Thomas Brown. It’s better than continuing to let Waldron run the offense into the ground, but it’s hard to imagine that saving the season or coach Matt Eberflus’ job.
And while the Bears overhaul their staff, the Packers sailed into the week at 6-3 and refreshed by their bye week ahead of the game Sunday at Soldier Field.
Firing Waldron was a small step. The Bears’ bigger problems must be addressed by those still in the building. They’re the ones who steered them to this point.
General manager Ryan Poles was intent on getting every detail right as he onboarded rookie quarterback Caleb Williams, the No. 1 overall pick, but missed something major. He never should have entrusted such a valuable resource to Eberflus.
It’s alarming that Eberflus didn’t seem to see trouble coming. How did he go from last week flatly dismissing a question about taking play calling away from Waldron — “Uh, no,” he said Nov. 4 as if the suggestion was absurd — to this week firing him? Meanwhile, his players have been speaking up publicly about the disconnect between them and Waldron since early in the season.
Throughout, Eberflus inexcusably was unable to change Waldron’s course. The head coach of any NFL team really should be capable of calling offensive plays himself — Anyone want to give Eberflus a crack at that? — let alone able to guide his coordinator to a more sensible plan.
But Eberflus allowed a wide range of coaching malpractice on his watch. He quite literally said nothing during the two most ludicrous and memorable play calls of Waldron’s tenure: The option to D’Andre Swift on fourth-and-one against the Colts for a 12-yard loss and the goal-line handoff to backup offensive lineman Doug Kramer that led to a lost fumble against the Commanders.
The accumulation of disasters and defeats reached a stage at which Eberflus was asked point-blank after losing 19-3 to the Patriots on Sunday if he was willing to plow ahead toward his own firing by sticking with Waldron. The situation has to be flagrantly foul for a question like that to be phrased so bluntly.
And now Eberflus is a head coach who, in two and a half seasons, has fired two offensive coordinators and had a defensive coordinator resign over misconduct. Four other position coaches, including another caught in misconduct, have left or been fired. It’s hard to explain all that away with a 14-29 record.
He always says, “We’ll look at everything,” but it sure seems like the Bears are looking at everyone but him. Every red flag on Eberflus’ staff is a red flag on him.
Poles built a wealth of popularity and public confidence in the recent offseason, but has seen much of it drift away on his decision to keep Eberflus at the end of last season when there was ample justification for moving on.
When that subject came up in a Chicago Sun-Times interview in late August, Poles’ rationale was that Eberflus was “coaching his butt off [and] maximizing the talent that we have” and establishing “a strong bond and culture” in the locker room.
He extracted optimism from wins over the Lions, Vikings, Falcons and Cardinals even as Eberflus’ team lost three games in which it blew double-digit leads in the fourth quarter, rarely had a dynamic offense and got swept again by the Packers.
Poles knew firing Eberflus would have been “popular,” especially if he had replaced him with an in-demand offensive mind like Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, but said he had conviction despite Eberflus’ low public approval rating.
“And you’ve got to be right,” Poles added. “That’s what we’re going to be judged on.”