Chicago Bears Fired Matt Eberflus After Detroit Lions Loss

Chicago Bears On SI

Chicago Bears fired Matt Eberflus after loss to Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving.

Transcript

00:00John, there was plenty of fallout from the Lions' victory over the Chicago Bears on Thanksgiving,

00:05and most notably, the Bears are going to make a coaching change.

00:08Matt Iberflues is out as head coach of the Bears after Thursday's game ending in a clock

00:14management debacle.

00:16Tell us more about what happened in the final seconds of that Lions game, and what the decision

00:21to fire Iberflues means for the Detroit Lions.

00:24Yeah, Christian, best way to put it, it was a debacle.

00:28After Caleb Williams gets sacked by the Detroit Lions defense, the clock is running, and it

00:34just became a chaotic scene, and the thing that kind of frustrated everybody and confused

00:38a lot of people was the fact that the Bears had a timeout.

00:42So Caleb Williams, there's confusion as to what play was called, maybe he was making

00:46an adjustment, but the clock is ticking.

00:49They acted, the Bears offense acted like they had five minutes left in the game.

00:53They were down by three with less than 30 seconds, and the clock is ticking below 20

00:57seconds, below 15 seconds, and by the time they snapped the football, it ended up being

01:02the final play was their only opportunity to go and win the game.

01:07When they're only down three, if the Bears had noticed that there was chaos, and most

01:12notably the head coach, who's in charge of game management in totality, if there was

01:17an opportunity to call a timeout reset, maybe you have a chance to tie the game or even

01:21win the game.

01:22So for everybody that saw that, it was a complete debacle and one of the most egregious

01:28situations that occurred, and unfortunately for the Bears, they'd never once in their

01:33history fired a coach in season.

01:35They made the eventual decision.

01:36You can't go forward when the basics, where the players really felt, and you kind of got

01:40that sense after the game, when you started hearing what the players in the Bears locker

01:46room were saying, they kind of indicated that they felt they did enough as players to win

01:50the game and really pointing the finger squarely at coaching for the, the missed opportunity

01:56to tie the game.

01:57And so it was a chaotic situation.

01:59And for Iberflues, it just became one too many situations in which the late game issues

02:07popped up and cost the Bears wins.

02:10So it's one of those deals where as a head coach, one of the tests that you're responsible

02:13with is to foster good relationships with players and develop them.

02:17But two, and I think you start to see a lot of coaches nowadays get fired for this reason.

02:23Mostly in-game management has to be on point.

02:27You have to excel.

02:28You can't just be on par with everybody else.

02:31You got to be proficient.

02:33You got to be one step ahead.

02:35You got to be understanding that, Hey, when the chaos starts to happen around a game or

02:41a situation, the coach and the team has to be prepared.

02:45And for the Bears, it just quite frankly looked like they were very unprepared in that late

02:50game moment against the Lions.

02:51And it caused the Bears a victory, one in which they could have earned on Thanksgiving.

02:56And I think what also upset a lot of individuals was when after the game, he's asked if you

03:01could replay the situation again, when you say that I'm satisfied with how it went, we

03:05just got to do things better.

03:07That really sent shockwaves across the internet.

03:09There probably shouldn't have been no acknowledgement of any positivity at that point.

03:12It should have just been, it's on me.

03:14I should have done much better.

03:16And for Matt Aberfluss, the mistakes mounted up this year resulted in a six game losing

03:21streak.

03:22And in the NFL, I think once you lose the confidence of the players, it's a wrap.

03:27And so his, his era in, in Chicago ends the Lions.

03:30Now we'll go on the road in week 16 to play a Bears team that has an interim head coach.

03:36It probably is going to make things a little bit easier for the Detroit Lions as maybe

03:40some players on the Bears might not, might be reading the, you know, the writing on the

03:45wall that there's going to be massive changes, um, maybe some distractions at the highest

03:50level for the Bears.

03:51So for the Detroit Lions, the one thing you got to pay attention to is in the off season,

03:56who the Bears are going to pay attention to in their coaching search.

04:00And you hope it doesn't turn to Lions offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson, but for the Chicago

04:04Bears, it's going to be a new era starting in 2025.

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