If Bears coach Matt Eberflus’ future truly is still being determined and every remaining game factors into the equation of whether the team will fire him, he met all the criteria in a 37-17 win over the Falcons on Sunday.
The Bears buried a middling opponent with a well-rounded performance that included dominant defense and thriving offense. Quarterback Justin Fields played one of his best games of the season, throwing for 268 yards and running for 45, and did it against the NFL’s sixth-ranked defense. The Bears went up 21-7 in the second quarter and never let their lead shrink to single digits.
Those are all weighty checkmarks on the positive side of the ledger for Eberflus.
If the Bears had looked like this all or most of the season, there likely wouldn’t be much debate about Eberflus’ future. Even the final result, whether they end up finishing 7-10 or 8-9, is acceptable progress coming off a three-win season in the total demolition phase of the rebuild.
Going into the season, the idea of finishing close to .500, even without a playoff berth, would’ve sat reasonably well with everyone — assuming everything looked promising along the way. The problem for Eberflus is that he is oversaw so much self-created turbulence along the way.
As he recounts all the supposed adversity his team overcame this season, don’t forget that the Bears did that to themselves. It wasn’t an unavoidable force coming from outside the building. Blowing three double-digit leads in the fourth quarter and losing wasn’t some storm that hit the Bears; it was alarming flaw that got exposed and exploited.
The majority of the red flags on Eberflus happened in the first half of the season, and since then his team has gone 5-2 and looked fairly functional. But those issues still matter, even if it feels like they happened a long time ago.
It’s very rare that two assistants on a coach’s staff are forced out for non-football reasons, as defensive coordinator Alan Williams and running backs coach David Walker were. It’s jarring to blow fourth-quarter leads of 14 against the Broncos, 12 against the Lions and 10 against the Browns. That last one was just two games ago, by the way.
The Bears also looked wildly unprepared for their season opener, when the Packers trounced them 38-20, and handed the Chiefs a blowout win as soon as they walked into the stadium. Those lapses don’t magically become excusable just because a few months have passed, and there’s still a very real concern about them recurring.
There also were various snags like the disconnect between Fields and offensive coordinator Getsy, the Chase Claypool situation and Fields’ midseason injury, and Eberflus stumbled trying to manage those publicly. He hasn’t had any podium gaffes in a while because it’s a lot easier to be the face of the franchise when things are going well.
But that’s a credit to him if he can win his way out of messes.
If the Bears had reached this point in a normal manner, steadily and persistently proving they were progressing, Eberflus would be fine. But they got here just barely. And it’ll be the same for Eberflus if he keeps his job: just barely.