Bears Reached a Point Where Staying Afloat Becomes the Real Issue

Analysis: Matt Eberflus has been able to get his team through one crisis after another but now they're at a point where it's either improve or sink.

Matt Eberflus and players during an easy win over Carolina. The soft underbelly of the Bears' schedule is over, yet they're in a crisis. / Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images

It's easy to wonder if this Tyrique Stevenson/Hail Mary situation is the crisis to pull down Matt Eberflus.

He withstood the resignation under fire of defensive coordinator Alan Williams last year, the firing a few weeks later of running backs coach David Walker mid-season, the blown games against the Lions, Browns and Broncos last year and a 3-14 first season—albeit one with a totally torn-up roster.

He even had a moment of crisis earlier this season when the Bear lost to the Colts for back-to-back defeats with a controversial option play call at the goal line involved.

His team lost Sunday to a team that rebuilt in one season and his team had beaten 40-20 last year. They play another team this week, the Cardinals, who began a rebuild after the Bears and are showing strong signs of being a force in the NFC West after winning three of four.

It's easy to wonder if the support Eberflus has always had from players is waning after all the second-guessing. Not all of it was from media or fans. DJ Moore and Jaylon Johnson did this.

Cole Kmet may have done something even more revealing by pointing out preparation flaws by players. The coaches are supposed to be guiding preparation, although Kmet said the players are cheating themselves "in the dark," away from coaches. Either way, it's the responsibility of the coaches.

My reaction from Matt Eberflus' press conference just now:

He feels the pressure. He was edgy. Chose to keep a lot of things in house (which is fine).

I don't think it's out of bounds to say that a loss at Arizona this week would be catastrophic.#DaBears pic.twitter.com/lV0zvLsqEb

— Harrison Graham (@HGrahamNFL) October 30, 2024

He had to re-organize the offense with new coaches after Year 2, and through all of this Eberflus has had the support of GM Ryan Poles and presumably Bears decision makers like president Kevin Warren and board chairman George McCaskey.

This doesn't yet resemble the team meltdown the Bears had in 2014 under coach Marc Trestman in his second season. If ever they were going to fire a coach in-season for the first time it would have been then, but then who would have coached the team the rest of the way because the staff was no better than Trestman.

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These Bears haven't quit on Eberflus, or at least they say they have his back.

"Yeah, you'd have to ask those guys," Eberflus said. "I'm going to be the man that I've been and the leader I've been and just be steady all the way through the process.

"We're a team that's growing, and we're a team that's getting better, and we'll work through this adversity."

The real potential flaw in Eberflus' statement is they are growing and getting better. Last week's loss to a team with a similar record didn't say this. They beat weaker teams and remain unable to win on the road with a 3-17 record there under him. They don't beat good teams. The only one they've beaten in his 2 1/2 seasons is Detroit last year and San Francisco in his very first game, but that was with the 49ers using a quarterback who had no business playing.

For Eberflus, it's going to become apparent to all whether he needs to go and it could be before the season ends.

The deciding factor will be the schedule.

The Bears have already blown their opportunity to be in position to withstand a gauntlet of Super Bowl-aspiring teams in the second half. They could have been 6-1, even 7-0 if Kyler Gordon holds a pick-6 opportunity against the Texans in the second half.

Instead, they're 4-3 and played the easiest schedule to this point. They play the second-toughest schedule based on opponents' records the rest of the way (.546). Only the Lions (.550) have a tougher schedule. And after the Bears play New England next week, it will be the toughest remaining schedule.

Even New England is making signs of being better after a comeback win over the Jets. It starts with the Cardinals and facing a coach who had worked for him before, Jonathan Gannon, and a team Eberflus' team beat handily last year.

This looks like another chance to show regression.

"I've said it before, every week in the NFL is the week, and this is the week this week," Eberflus said. "We're at Arizona, very good football team. They've won a couple games closer at the end and executed well, run the ball really well. (Cardinals back James) Conner and that offensive line does a great job. The ability for the quarterback to run as well."

The Bears will either sink or swim the rest of the way on their own merit based on the toughest competition. Teams lacking unity behind their coach will never make it through that kind of test, especially with a rookie quarterback who is as prone to mistakes as making big plays.

What they say or refuse to say now doesn't mean as much as what they're going to need to do on the field.

"The consequences for things, we lost the game and it's important that we now focus on Arizona," Eberflus said. "And again, that (loss) was hard, no doubt. And again, we're moving on to Arizona and that's important that everybody does that and that's my job as head coach to get this group to move onto the preparation for the Arizona game."

They'd better because it would easy to be blown out on the road against a team improving like the Cardinals have and the one thing this team hasn't done yet that the 2014 Bears of Trestman did in their free fall was get blown out. It happened repeatedly to them.

Watch the scoreboard to see if this is headed the wrong way.

The Bears don't have to say they support Eberflus and Eberflus doesn't have to say anything about Stevenson's punishment, but how they start handling games against real competition will determine whether any of that means a thing in the future.

Twitter: BearsOnSI