CHICAGO (WGN) — For the second time this season on Sunday, the hearts of the Chicago Bears were ripped out of their chests like a grotesque Mortal Kombat finisher. It’s something that’s become commonplace during the Matt Eberflus era, and will be the reason he’s gone in the near future.
It also necessitates the hire of a head coach who can truly establish a winning culture with the talent that exists on this roster.
As The Athletic’s Kevin Fishbain first pointed out, the Bears are 101-24-2 all time when they have 0 turnovers on offense and create a turnover on defense. Three of those losses have happened over the last three weeks.
Rounded to the third decimal point, that’s an .815 winning percentage before Eberflus and crew dropped three in a row. The probability of losing three games in a row under those circumstances?
0.63%.
To be clear, that number is not 63%. It is zero-point-six-three percent.
Just about the only things less likely than the Eberflus Bears losing three straight while winning the turnover battle is the reader of this column getting struck by lightning, winning the Mega Millions jackpot or finding a two-headed animal in the wild.
It takes talent to be that kind of bad, and the mind-numbing numbers extend across the entirety of the Eberflus regime.
Before this season even began to unfold, the 2023 Chicago Bears became the first team in National Football League history to both lose a single game with 40-plus minutes in time of possession and a 3-plus turnover margin, and lose multiple games in the same season up by 10-plus points with a 2-plus turnover margin going into the fourth quarter.
In 2022, the Bears went 3-14 despite winning the time of possession battle and finishing even or positive in the turnover margin department in seven different games. They went 1-6 in those contests and twice Chicago was tied or had the lead going into halftime, only to lose both games (Week 11 vs ATL and Week 16 vs BUF).
Time and again when the Bears have needed guts and bravado from Eberflus the most, he has been gun-shy and conservative, either sheepishly playing it safe, or being caught wholeheartedly flat-footed on the way to another bone-headed loss, which brings me to my next point.
It’s plain to see this all serves as the prelude to what some will deem the most consequential head coaching search in Bears history, and paints a clear direction the franchise needs to go.
Chicago needs a true culture setter at head coach, one that’s given the keys to the franchise and is in lockstep with Ryan Poles to set this organization on a path towards sincere contention.
A head coach that can galvanize his roster to eat a punch early, and when the game is on the line, rises to the occasion and motivates his players to go above and beyond, akin to the likes of Dan Campbell or Jim Harbaugh.
Campbell is the field general of the NFL’s best team in the Detroit Lions (9-1), and Harbaugh is amid his maiden voyage as the captain of the resurgent Los Angeles Chargers (7-3).
One doesn’t have to go far to find an example of the difference that can make — Eberflus versus having a head coach like Campbell or Harbaugh. Nearly the same situation played out at the end of the Bears – Packers game that did in the Chargers – Bengals matchup.
In Chicago, Caleb Williams hit Keenan Allen for a 12-yard gain on first down with 42 seconds left, and the Packers called timeout with 35 seconds remaining.
Eberflus called a Roschon Johnson handoff to the left-hand for a 2-yard gain, and instead of running another play to try and get Cairo Santos a little bit closer to the goal posts, Eberflus played it safe, letting the clock wind down to three seconds before burning his final timeout.
Moment’s later, Green Bay’s Karl Brooks blocked Santos’s 46-yard field goal attempt, and Chicago walked away losers of four straight on the season, and a matchup record of 11 straight against the Packers.
A few hours later on the West Coast, Los Angeles quarterback Justin Herbert hit Ladd McConkey for a 27-yard gain out of bounds at Cincinnati’s 29-yard line with 31 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.
The Bengals called a timeout to make sure they had the personnel they wanted out on the field, but instead of playing it safe and taking a knee to lineup a potential game-winning field goal, Harbaugh called one more run play to see how close the Chargers could get Cameron Dicker to the goal posts.
Running back J.K. Dobbins took the handoff 29 yards to the house, and Dicker was never needed. Los Angeles won after Cincinnati failed to convert on a Hail Mary attempt as time expired.
On Monday, Eberflus conceded the risks outweighed the rewards in that situation and said he would do it all the same, if given the chance for a do-over.
“Yeah, the obvious risks are … You false start, you know, you go back backwards. You look at all that, run an outside play. They call holding. You know, you throw a pass and it gets tipped, whatever it is,” Eberflus said. “If you feel good about your decision there and the wind conditions [are okay] where you are in the field, then you feel good about it.
“You take it down and kick it, and we felt good about it.”
In that situation, Campbell would do the exact same thing Harbaugh and the Chargers did — hand the ball off to smash forward for a few more yards, either getting his kicker that much closer to the uprights, or busting off an explosive play for a game-defining TD.
It’s that brazen, infectious confidence that has spread throughout each of those two coaches’ locker rooms and allows for them to pull off miraculous feats like the one the Chargers did Sunday. Campbell and Harbaugh coach as hard as they believe in their players, and their players play as hard as they believe in their coaches.
From the outside looking in, it feels like no such thing exists between Eberflus and the Bears’ players, and that’s the reason Chicago should move on.
It’s more than time to find the culture setter that someday puts them in the same conversation as Campbell’s Lions and Harbaugh’s Chargers.