Bear Digest

Why Giving Matt Eberflus One Last Hail Mary Makes Total Sense

Analysis: Stability supports a young quarterback and while there appears little of that with the Bears these days, making a head coaching change now removes even a shred of it.

Gene Chamberlain

The Bears sideline will be riddled with instability now with a change at OC and this isn't conducive to bringing along a rookie QB.
The Bears sideline will be riddled with instability now with a change at OC and this isn't conducive to bringing along a rookie QB. / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
In this story:

It was a Hail Mary pass that started the Bears downward into the bottomless pit where they're currently falling.

Now Matt Eberflus has thrown his own Hail Mary pass in the form of offensive coordinator change from Shane Waldron to Thomas Brown. He can only hope there's a Tyrique Stevenson type at the other end who could tip it to a receiver and save his coaching regime.

It would be nice for Bears fans to think a move like an OC firing could alter their fortunes but the truth is there is far too much working against them to prevent their spiral from stopping until it ultimately ends with Eberflus' firing. There are examples of OC firings working for a team's immediate success, the latest being in Buffalo where they went 6-1 with Joe Brady after firing Ken Dorsey. But that was a team with the proven, winning structure already in place.

Brown Ahead of the Game This Time

The fact Brown takes over a Bears offense with a system he worked with for three years gives him an edge over last year when he had to perform an emergency procedure when called upon by the Carolina Panthers.

Brown had been working under Frank Reich and within that system only for six games when first given the task of making play calls in the attack. His three years under Sean McVay with the Rams represents a better chance he can succeed with the Bears than last year, when the Panthers averaged 11.4 points a game with his play calling.

Personnel and how he uses those players is the key.

It's a very familiar situation for Brown in that his quarterback is a rookie and the first pick taken overall. And his team has one of the better defenses in the league.

Last year Carolina finished fourth in the league on defense but still won only two games. The Bears are 13th on defense now but seventh in points allowed and seventh in pass defense. They've given up the fewest passing touchdowns, rank No. 1 in red zone defense and seventh in defensive third-down percentage.

So there is evidence better support for their defense could be an uplifting factor.

They played strong complementary football in their three-game winning streak immediately preceding the current three-game losing streak and Waldron's firing.

The Problems

There are three real problems with this team trying to change offensive coordinators at midstream and expecting success.

One is a rookie quarterback. Another is how far they have already dropped down into the hopeless pit. The last is their offensive line.

Even with the experience Brown received last year while working with a rookie No. 1 overall choice in Bryce Young, it wasn't necessarily positive. Young had a better passer rating with Frank Reich calling plays than when Brown called them, 76.5 to 73.1. He didn't improve, and this year still looked bad until making big strides in recent games under new head coach Dave Canales.

Expecting a rookie passer to grasp any change in coordinators when they're having trouble already grasping the NFL is a real ask. Maybe a veteran might handle it, but a rookie just past the halfway point of his first season is going to have difficulty with all the switching.

Turning the team around takes more than just working with Williams to restore his confidence and the confidence of players in him. Teammates, themselves, already appear disillusioned by the entire mess. This is the second problem, how far down the drain they've already gone. Who has checked out already?

A few, like T.J. Edwards, have said players haven't.

However, Cole Kmet saw players cheating themselves in practice earlier this season and on Monday, cornerback Jaylon Johnson was on WSCR AM-670's Spiegel and Holmes for a regular radio spot and hardly acted like this situation is exaggerated when asked if there were some players who weren't working as hard as others.

"Yeah, there ain't no question," he said.

It might be the truth but as long as this is the case then it reflects poorly on the coaching staff and Matt Eberflus, who constantly is talking about effort and bases his HITS principle on it. 

Foundational things like this simply don't change overnight in the middle of a season. There's no way a team with the lack of momentum and direction described in these accounts can turn around regardless of coordinator or quarterback.

It's All About Supporting Williams

Finally, Williams is the future of the team and needs experiences to fall back on by playing but getting beat up and tossed around like a rag doll isn't going to keep him healthy or provide him with valuable plays necessary to eventually realize success.

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The offensive line is tattered. There's no other way to put it.

When three starters are out, they're playing a third-string center at guard and the two tackles are injured, the beatings will continue. Teven Jenkins is their best lineman and has been injured five of the last six games without missing a start. The Bears have given up 38 sacks, second most in the league. They've allowed 15 in the past two games.

You can sit and watch film of Williams forever and conclude some sacks are his fault but until they can give him the consistent time necessary to set up more often and throw, there is no value to their prize rookie even being on the field.  They can only hope the line injuries end.

For all of these reasons, the Eberflus regime would appear doomed and the nuisance is they still have eight games left.

If they act to fire a head coach now, it's questionable how much value they'll have for Williams in the final eight games.

Eberflus at least can head up a defense and call defensive plays. When Eric Washington did this in Carolina, it did not go well.

As long as Eberflus is around, their defense can at least provide some type of support for the problematic offense and give them a fighting chance to be in games.  

This, in turn, does provide more value for Williams' development because he is in closer situations and not always out there in garbage time. It allows one last vestige of stability from which the QB can learn.

So keeping Eberflus until it's at least proven his Hail Mary attempt with Brown has failed is both fair to him and to Williams for stability and development.

Once they know the fate of the team for sure, then they can finally fire a head coach later in the season with a few games left, ending that silly Bears history of never firing a head coach during a season.

With Green Bay, Minnesota, Detroit and San Francisco coming up directly, and a big break before the 49ers game, it shouldn't be too long.

Twitter: BearsOnSI

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.