Matt Eberflus brought film clips.
The Bears head coach traveled the country in January, flying on private jets with general manager Ryan Poles, in search of an offensive coordinator. Every six-hour interview was the same — after a brief introduction, Eberflus would have the candidates explain their offense. He’d present late-game hypotheticals — ironic, in retrospect — and ask what plays each candidate would call. He’d show film clips of the coordinator’s plays and ask follow-ups.
Then Eberflus ventured into more open-ended queries, looking for in-depth answers.
“Some guys would give you ABC,” he told the Sun-Times in August. “I’m really looking for A to Z.”
He found an F.
Eberflus’ decision to hire coordinator Shane Waldron wasn’t the first — or last — mistake by Bears leadership this year. Each one has compounded the risk of further jeopardizing rookie quarterback’s Caleb Williams’ development, the way the Bears stunted Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields. The stability the Bears so craved for Williams, to the point of teaching him Waldron’s playbook a month before they drafted him first overall in April, has vanished.
In 2017, the Bears drafted Trubisky in Round 1 and fired his coach at the end of the year. In 2021, they drafted Fields in Round 1 and fired his coach when the season ended. The Bears allowed the same thing happened to Williams.
Eberflus was a problem. But he wasn’t the problem. A franchise that has won just six playoff games since their 1985 Super Bowl season has issues that go far deeper. Chairman George McCaskey, president/CEO Kevin Warren and Poles have been entrusted to fix them — troubling, when they let them fester in the first place.
Warren appears no closer to finding a home for the Bears’ new stadium — or anyone to pay for it — than he was when he started in April 2023. Poles is expected to remain in his role next season but flubbed his initial hire of Eberflus. And McCaskey has yet to win a playoff game in 13 years as chairman.
Their first mistake was in keeping Eberflus after last season despite a 10-24 career record. Poles felt the Bears had momentum after they won five of their last eight games — despite the fact that three of the worst eight teams in the NFL were among the vanquished. Rather than pair an offensive-minded head coach with his future No. 1 draft pick, he chose to let Eberflus hire a coordinator. Warren and McCaskey co-signed, the same way they did Friday when Eberflus was fired. Bears players’ frustration reached full boil after he failed to use a timeout to stop the clock in the final seconds of the loss to the Lions.
“God don’t make mistakes,” safety Jaquan Brisker wrote cryptically on X about 10 minutes after his firing.
Eberflus took a more active role in the offense this season — he was rarely involved in Getsy’s schemes, regardless of what he said publicly — but still couldn’t smooth over concerns about Waldron’s playbook and style. By Week 3, players took their concerns public that Waldron had allowed mistakes, particularly by his rookie quarterback, to go unchecked in practice
“Don’t feel like you can’t coach us,” tight end Marcedes Lewis said. “I want to be coached. I want to be great. This is not, you know, this is not for play. This is our job.”
It wasn’t Waldron’s for long. One month and one day later, Waldron called for a handoff to backup center Doug Kramer, who had never touched a football at the high school, college or pro level, against the Commanders. He fumbled at the goal line in a game the Bears lost on a now-infamous, season-ruining Hail Mary.
A week later, after a disspiriting loss to the Cardinals, Eberflus quickly shot down any thought he’d replace Waldron. After just one more game, though, he fired Waldron in his trademark clunky style. He let Waldron linger at Halas Hall all Monday after the Patriots loss before firing him Tuesday morning — costing replacement Thomas Brown a day of preparation for the rival Packers.
Brown improved Williams’ passer rating to 99.2 in their three games together. Naming Brown the interim head coach, though, risks scuttling the progress he’d made with Williams, who is by far the most valuable asset inside Halas Hall.
Brown was one of the nine candidates Eberflus interviewed in January. Eberflus picked the first person he met with and made Waldron the only coordinator flown to Halas Hall for a second interview.
The Bears were comforted by Waldron’s experience — he’d been the Seahawks’ play-caller for three years before Pete Carroll’s staff was swept out at the end of last season. They felt previous coordinator Luke Getsy was too inexperienced to adjust during games. The Bears averaged the fourth-most yards per play in the NFL in the first quarter last year, but fell to 25th in the second, 27th in the third and 26th in the fourth.
Eberflus and Poles were deliberate in their coordinator search in January. They wondered whether their shotgun marriage in 2022, forged when the head coach hustled to round out his staff, was to blame. Eberflus admired the Packers’ offensive scheme, of which Getsy was a part. They also shared an agent, former Bears player Trace Armstrong. Armstrong also represents Waldron — and Poles, too.
Fields openly questioned Getsy last year. On Sept. 23, 2023, the same day defensive coordinator Alan Williams resigned as a result of conduct issues, the quarterback said he was playing too robotic.
“Could be coaching, I think,” he said.
It was. But those keep changing — the Bears are now on their third different offensive play-caller and third different defensive play-caller since the start of last season — and the results are the same. That needs to change, for the sake of the quarterback who provides the best hope for lasting change at Halas Hall.