Kevin Warren ‘very pleased’ with Bears’ energy, avoids talk of future

Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren isn’t ready to tip his hand about coach Matt Eberflus’ future.

“As we said all along, we just continually will stay focused on finishing the season strong and take a big-picture, methodical look at everything,” Warren said Friday when asked if the Bears had made a decision about Eberflus returning in 2024. “I’m looking forward to heading to Green Bay [on Saturday], and hopefully the team can keep playing well.

“I’m very pleased with the energy of our team. And it’s not only on game day — it’s around the practices, around Halas Hall. Just the energy. . . . Guys are playing hard. They’re competing.”

Warren is expected to address the future in deeper detail next week. Eberflus and the Bears are 7-9 but have won five of their last seven games entering Sunday’s finale against the rival Packers at Lambeau Field.

“I’m really energized as a franchise [with] where we are, with what we have going on with the stadium, what we have going on internally building our brand and what we have going on with our football team,” Warren said.

The Bears could pick a stadium site in a matter of months, he said. The team paid $197.2 million for the 326-acre former Arlington Park site 11 months ago but have since looked on the lakefront and in other suburbs after taking issue with the property tax assessment of the Arlington Heights site.

A decision is coming soon.

“When I started [in April], I said hopefully within the first year,” Warren said. “I think we’re right on target with being able to do it. I’m pleased with the progress that we’ve made. . . . Look forward to the game this weekend, and to continue to make good progress on the stadium.”

Asked if he’d been offered incentives to pick the city or the suburbs, Warren praised Bears fans in both areas and said he was trying to be an “out-of-the-box, big thinker.”

He spoke Friday from Lurie Children’s Hospital, where he and his wife, Greta, announced a $1 million donation to the hospital’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders. Most of the money will be routed to help families manage the financial burdens that come with a child’s diagnosis.

“Whatever we can provide to soften the blow on any level, we’re in,” Greta Warren said.

The gift is in honor of Kevin Warren’s sister, Carolyn Elaine Warren-Knox, who died of brain cancer in 2014. Before her death — which Warren received the news about when he was in Green Bay for a Vikings-Packers game — she asked her brother to do what he could to make things easier for cancer patients and their families.

Warren has first-hand experience with the hospital experience for children. In the summer of 1974, when he was 10, he was hit by a car while riding his bicycle in Tempe, Arizona. He was put in traction, spent months in the hospital and had to lie flat on his back for about a year.

“My passion at the Bears?” he said. “Yes, I’m here to lead us to multiple Super Bowls. Yes, I’m here to build a new stadium. And, yes, I’m here to build a culture and become the most fortified and strong franchise in the world. But one of the reasons why I work every single day and I’ll work until the very end is to be able to be in a position for our family to [have] resources to give.”