Inside the Bears’ firing of Matt Eberflus

CHICAGO — While Chicago Bears players gathered their belongings inside the visitors locker room at Ford Field on Thanksgiving afternoon, team president and CEO Kevin Warren hung around longer than normal.

Warren stood near quarterback Caleb Williams‘ locker and spoke at length with Ted Crews, the Bears’ special adviser and chief administrative officer who spent a decade with Chicago general manager Ryan Poles in Kansas City. Warren talked with a handful of players one by one as they headed toward the buses after another embarrassing loss fueled by questionable coaching decisions, this time 23-20 to the Detroit Lions.

“We need to be better,” Warren told the players, according to a team source. Warren assured them he was committed to seeing that through.

The Bears had fought back from a 16-0 halftime deficit, but time ran out on their final drive, which reached the Detroit 41. After Williams was sacked with about 30 seconds remaining, coach Matt Eberflus failed to call his final timeout to set up a potential tying field goal. It was the Bears’ sixth straight loss.

Speculation about Eberflus’ job security had been growing since a tipped Hail Mary in Washington a month prior sparked the Bears’ losing skid. One of his biggest shortcomings was the Bears’ inability to finish games. Eberflus’ 5-19 record in one-score games is the worst in NFL history for a coach with at least 20 such games, and it featured several unusual endings. The conclusion of his Bears tenure was no less strange.

As players filed into the locker room after the loss, Eberflus began delivering a message that fell on deaf ears. The tone, according to one player, spoke to how players battled and came up short. As Eberflus spoke, an exasperated Jaylon Johnson interrupted his head coach and began shouting obscenities out of frustration from the same results playing out over and over.

Eberflus cut his message short and walked out of the room.

“There was frustration,” Johnson said Monday on WSCR radio in Chicago. “There was words from myself that I expressed just from my frustration from losing.”

Johnson, a second-team All-Pro cornerback, has yet to experience a winning season since being drafted by the Bears in 2020. Johnson was stoic as he sat at his locker when the media entered the room, a complete departure from his mood minutes before.

“Part of what I said after the game was I’ve been losing for five years,” Johnson said on WSCR. “I feel like a high-level player like myself, after a certain point, losing games how we’ve been losing games, somebody has to express something. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and it went the way it went.”

One team source said Eberflus’ message was “seconds,” and that the vibe of the room was “contentious. It was different. Players were telling the truth.”

One player’s categorization of what transpired: “s— show.”

Bears nickel corner Kyler Gordon fielded questions in front of his locker about the unusual ways the Bears lost during the ongoing streak. When asked for the underlying reason, Gordon declined.

“Next question,” Gordon said. “No comment.”

Another player told ESPN that while he believed Eberflus had the right intentions, the message became redundant and wasn’t landing.

“You only want to hear it so much,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “Coach is going to say what he’s going to say.

“At the end of the day, we all realize we want the results. We just haven’t had the results. That falls upon everybody.”

Warren’s presence in the postgame locker room is routine at Soldier Field and on the road, but things felt different this time. There was a growing sense change was coming.

The following afternoon, Eberflus was fired — the first head coach in franchise history to be fired during a season — but not before another twist. On Friday morning, when many expected Poles to announce a coaching change, Eberflus conducted his normal day-after-game news conference via Zoom. He said he was confident he would be coaching the Bears the following week in San Francisco. A few hours later, ESPN’s Adam Schefter broke the news of his ouster, followed by the team issuing a news release.

“In retrospect, could we have done it better? Absolutely,” Warren said Monday, “and I’ll be the first one to raise my hand, yes.”

BEARS DIRECTOR OF player personnel Trey Koziol erupted from his seat in the press box when a defensive pass interference penalty gave Chicago a first down at the Lions’ 25-yard line with 56 seconds remaining.

With 36 seconds left, the Bears attempted to run a draw play on second-and-20, but edge rusher Za’Darius Smith blew past right tackle Larry Borom — who entered the game after starter Darnell Wright was carted off with an injury — to sack Williams for a 6-yard loss.

There were 32 seconds remaining when Williams hit the ground. The Bears had one timeout left.

Eberflus said postgame and again Friday that the Bears had hoped to run a play that would have gone to Kmet or wide receiver Rome Odunze with 18 seconds remaining before using their last timeout to kick a field goal.

But no timeout was called, a decision that left players stunned.

“We practice those situations all the time,” wide receiver Keenan Allen said. “I feel like we did enough, even though we were going backwards [because of penalties] a couple of those plays down in the red zone. We’ll say if we don’t have those penalties, we probably score. But with those penalties, we still should have a field goal [attempt].”

Internally, the fact that no timeout was called raised questions among the front office and coaching staff over in-game management, team sources said. While the decision to call timeouts, throw a challenge flag or go for it on fourth down ultimately rests on the head coach, Eberflus’ headset allows him to communicate with coaches upstairs in the booth, including those on staff responsible for game management decisions.

“There’s a system that’s broke and wasn’t fixed,” a team source said.

Williams said he could have called a timeout, but after calling one earlier in the drive, the 23-year-old rookie said he didn’t feel comfortable doing it again. As the clock wound down, he knew there would be time for only one more play, so he changed the play to a deep pass to Odunze, but it fell incomplete.

“Maybe in the later years of my career [I’ll call a timeout],” Williams said, “but right now, I get the call, I’m trying to lead the guys to win, and I’m trying to get everybody lined up and from there I’m trying to make a play for the Chicago Bears.”

AT THE END of Warren’s first season with the Minnesota Vikings in 2005, the team’s brass met with coach Mike Tice shortly after a win against the Bears. Despite the victory, the Vikings were eliminated from playoff contention, and Tice was fired in the locker room.

That move never sat well with Warren.

“I have just learned over my career that it’s important to try to at least get a good night’s sleep, which I don’t think any of us did Thursday night, but at least try to think clearer and be respectful to make better decisions,” Warren said Monday.

Warren, Poles and team chairman George McCaskey met Friday morning at Halas Hall around 7 a.m. to discuss Eberflus’ future.

The Bears were aware of Eberflus’ regularly scheduled day-after-game media availability that was set to take place two hours later, but their meeting continued until they arrived at a decision.

As one team source told ESPN, it wasn’t just the losses, it was what the future looked like. They had to factor in Williams’ performance the rest of the season and whether staying with Eberflus would hinder his development as a franchise quarterback.

With Williams surrounded by improved offensive playmakers, the 2024 season was supposed to be the year Chicago took major steps forward, but a 19-3 loss to the New England Patriots on Nov. 10 — the third loss during the streak — seemed like a breaking point, according to a team source. The Bears “looked like a bad football team, and that’s not what we are,” the source said.

The loss to the Patriots was followed by three much more competitive outings, a 20-19 loss to the Packers in which the Bears had a 46-yard field goal blocked after opting not to go for more yardage, an overtime loss at the Vikings, then the Thanksgiving Day meltdown. Three losses that easily could have been wins.

As the Bears brass deliberated, Eberflus went on with his normal media availability. He had caught heat for saying after the game that things were handled “the right way” in the final sequence, and he doubled down Friday, explaining why he believed that.

“Our decision at that point was to be on the ball, hold our timeout and get the play off at 15 to 10 seconds, in that range, throw it into field goal range there and then call a timeout and then kick the game[-tying field goal] on fourth down,” Eberflus said. “The operation wasn’t fast enough, and we didn’t do a good job of executing there in that moment.”

His news conference had “zero” to do with his firing, per a team source. After Poles, Warren and McCaskey were done meeting, Eberflus was fired. Eberflus met with his staff around 11 a.m. CT to inform them of the decision.

EBERFLUS HAD PLANNED to give his staff the weekend off following Thursday’s loss. After Thomas Brown learned he was being promoted from interim offensive coordinator to interim head coach, he had one question.

“Do I have any obligations this weekend?” Brown said.

Brown had a 4 p.m. flight to Miami to spend time with his wife, Jessica, and three sons, whom he had not seen in over a month and a half. He said going home for a belated Thanksgiving, and to spend time with his family, was what he needed to recharge before taking over coaching duties for the final five games.

“He’s the real deal,” one front office source said of Brown.

Brown will continue to call plays and transition from the coaches booth to the sideline. His role in Williams’ development has been noticeable. Brown replaced the fired Shane Waldron on Nov. 12, and Williams has thrown five touchdowns over the past two games after not throwing one in the previous four. Williams also has thrown 232 consecutive passes without a pick, which is the longest streak by a rookie in NFL history.

With five games left, the Bears will have a chance to evaluate Brown but do not want to view these games as an audition, a team source said. Seeing how the team plays and competes carries weight, but the team is also aware of the situation Brown has been put in by taking over late in the season while running an offense that is not his.

Two team sources told ESPN that Brown will be considered among the candidates in January as the Bears begin their coaching search. Other names the Bears hope to interview include Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson and Washington Commanders OC Kliff Kingsbury, the latter of whom interviewed for the Bears’ offensive coordinator opening before the team hired Waldron.

In his weekly radio appearance on WSCR, wide receiver DJ Moore said Poles told him the Bears would aim for a coach who is “a leader of men.”

What Poles saw in that locker room on Thanksgiving Day convinced him Eberflus was no longer that leader.

“We were all frustrated,” Poles said. “Anytime where you get to a situation like that, where you can’t finish a game with a win — and it had been a few weeks there, I think everyone was frustrated.

“I saw frustration.”