There’s a lot on the line for Bears coach Matt Eberflus over the final eight games.
Mainly his job.
The losses keep piling up on Eberflus, whose team committed five turnovers to throw away a game against the Saints on Sunday. He’s now 5-21 as head coach, and regardless of all the explanations, it’ll be hard for general manager Ryan Poles to justify keeping him unless he starts stacking wins.
That’s how Eberflus arrives at facing the lowly Panthers on Thursday as a huge game. The Bears also need to stick the Panthers with a loss because they get their upcoming first-round pick. Losing this one — at home against a 1-7 opponent — would be a multi-faceted disaster for the Bears.
It also would be the latest in a string of letdowns for Eberflus, who oversaw the longest losing streak in franchise history and has yet to win back-to-back games.
The roster isn’t perfect, but Poles said before the season he believed he was 75%-80% through his checklist on the rebuild. That was overly optimistic, but still there’s likely a discrepancy between what Poles thinks of the Bears’ talent and their 2-7 record.
Last week, coming off a blowout loss to the Chargers in prime time and in the aftermath of firing running backs coach David Walker for misconduct, Poles was asked for the first time whether Eberflus is the right man for the job. It took less than a season and a half.
“I get the question,” he acknowledged. “What I see every day ... it is stable, man. I know in the outside world it doesn’t look like that. And I know it looks like we’re far away. But this dude comes in every day and just keeps chipping away.
“The way he holds everything down here is incredible for how loud it is, how tough it is. ... It’s been really hard, especially from where we started last year, trying to build this and do it the right way. I see a grown man that has leadership skills to get this thing out of the hole and into where it needs to be.”
Poles undoubtedly respects and admires Eberflus, but he also needs wins to stay in good standing. For all that Poles has liked seeing behind the scenes, too many negatives have played out on center stage. It’s a Bears tradition to tell everyone it’s not as bad as it looks all the way until the point when they have no choice but to make changes.
Eberflus needs a winning record the rest of the way to make a strong case to stay, and that’s a mountainous request. He’d be looking to win as many times in the next eight games as he did in his first 26.
He needs to enhance a reasonably well-stocked defense. He needs to make sure the offense looks viable, because that falls under his purview, too, even as a defensive-minded head coach. He needs to excel at in-game details.
Eberflus must show he can maximize what he has, because if Poles finishes construction on the roster, he’ll want a coach who multiplies that talent. That’s what Andy Reid, John Harbaugh, Mike Tomlin and others have done.
If the Bears keep playing at their current pace and stagger to 2-6 from here, no amount of imperceptible, intangible progress by Eberflus should be enough to offset sitting at 7-27 over two seasons.
It simply can’t take forever to rebuild. The Lions and Jaguars each won three games in 2021, had winning records last season and are 6-2 and leading their division this year.
Those are merely the most recent quick turnarounds in a league that has them all the time. The Bears have to ask why it looks so doable elsewhere but not for them. And when most general managers begin examining that, they start with the coach.
