“How in the world can that happen?”
Those were the words of Westwood One’s Jason Benetti on Thursday as the Chicago Bears found an inventive way to lose in a 23-20 loss to Detroit on Thanksgiving.
Benetti, the former TV voice of the White Sox, knows a little something about Chicago sports calamities. He was also on the call, in his new job with the Detroit Tigers, as the White Sox set a new major-league record for losses this season. He’s seen some things.
And no offense to Jim Nantz and Tony Romo, but the world deserved to hear the radio call from Benetti and Ryan Leaf. It was just perfect. From Benetti’s intensity as the clock ticked down to Leaf’s deadpan response to it all, I just couldn’t stop listening to it.
Matt Eberflus forgets he has a timeout on national television,
called by @jasonbenetti and @RyanDLeaf for Westwood One: pic.twitter.com/J9TFSl0FOf
— will: Riley Greene Truther (@wrhiv_72) November 28, 2024
“How in the world can that happen?”
Benetti is a Chicagoan. The disbelief in his voice carried the context of all the disasters that preceded this singular moment.
“It’s the Bears,” Leaf said to answer Benetti’s question. “We wrote the script when I texted you this week. It’s exactly how it played out.”
Man oh man. Forget getting fired, Bears coach Matt Eberflus just needs to be put out of his misery.
No, no, not like that. I mean he should lose his job, like right this very second. It should’ve happened by the time you’re reading this on Friday.
This is no longer a dark sports comedy. There is no schadenfreude here. Watching him flail at the end of Bears losses is painful, awkward, and it’s not healthy for anyone.
We all know the Bears (4-8) have never fired a head coach during the season, but it’s not like this organization has a proud tradition of success to justify that reasoning. In this case, it would behoove everyone to just cut the cord. To keep Eberflus as the head coach for one more game would be unfair to the players, the fans, the team employees and even to Eberflus, who has become something of a master of panic in late-game situations.
Eberflus, on a six-game losing streak, should get the month of December to collect his thoughts, spend time with family, take a tropical vacation and figure out his next step. He doesn’t need to fly to the Bay Area to discover yet another way to lose an NFL game. He’ll go back to being a coordinator, which is a good life.
Bears general manager Ryan Poles should use the month of December to evaluate how they got here and start researching potential replacements for Eberflus or else he might be looking for a new job soon. Being able to get a public head start on the hiring season is the best reason to fire Eberflus now. There are going to be a lot of openings and the Bears simply can’t waste another hiring cycle settling for the fifth- or sixth-best option out there. Poles screwed up this hire. He can’t screw up again.
With a veteran defense and a fast-improving Caleb Williams, this season had promise. Now it’s just another lost cause. And it’s getting uglier by the game.
Eberflus’ time with the Bears (it’s certainly not an era) reached its nadir with literally every football-loving person in the world watching and yelling at him to call a timeout as the seconds burned away like a fuse to a bomb in an ’80s action movie.
A wild end to this one. #CHIvsDET pic.twitter.com/zwR7g1Efv9
— NFL (@NFL) November 28, 2024
No one could believe it, not even the coaching fraternity on TV.
“In 70 years of coaching at all three levels, I’ve never seen dysfunction that cost a team an opportunity to win the game,” Fox analyst Jimmy Johnson said at halftime of the Giants-Cowboys game. “When Eberflus saw they were off track and there was dysfunction, he should’ve called timeout.”
“Your responsibility is to not panic in critical situations… That’s a massive, massive fail by Matt Eberflus.”@M_Ryan02 cannot believe the Bears’ clock management at the end of their loss 😬 pic.twitter.com/aXwXoEc4Ju
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) November 28, 2024
“I think it’s two times Matt Eberflus has froze at the end of a game,” CBS analyst and coaching icon Bill Cowher said after the game.
It’s hard to believe that the Bears could find a way to top a Hail Mary, a blocked field goal and last week’s failed comeback against the Minnesota Vikings, but this debacle took the cake.
The loss in Washington is what sent the Bears on this losing spiral, but let’s be honest, despite the coaching mistakes Eberflus made in that game, not calling a timeout as 26 seconds ticked off the clock to set up a game-tying field goal was so obvious that there was no defense. It was just a massive coaching malfunction.
And yet, Eberflus, never a dynamic public speaker, still tried to defend himself after the game, saying at one point in a series of excuses, “I think we handled it the right way.”
Now, you can certainly blame Williams for dawdling at the end instead of running a play with some haste — just like you can blame him for the sack he took in overtime of the Vikings loss last week — but he’s a rookie quarterback. He’s playing now to experience the highs and lows of the most difficult job in sports. He can learn from this and build on it. The head coach is on the sidelines to be the adult on the field.
It’s Eberflus’ job to handle the late-game situations and he has shown that he’s simply not up to the task. He’s an assistant coach masquerading as a head coach and the charade is over.
With five games left, the Bears’ season is over. It’s been over. They haven’t had a shot at actually making the playoffs for weeks now. But the players deserve better at the end of games.
With better coaching, they could have won this game just like they could’ve beaten Green Bay and Minnesota. Three division games, three losses by a combined seven points. There’s a reason Eberflus is 5-19 in one-score games and 2-15 in the NFC North in his tenure.
The sad thing for him is the Bears, a 10-point underdog, could have won this game despite nearly finishing the first half with zero first downs.
I kid you not these are real stats.
Total offensive plays:
Lions – 42
Bears – 9Time of possession
Lions – 21:55
Bears – 4:54Total yards:
Lions – 253
Bears – 15— Sean Hammond (@sean_hammond) November 28, 2024
After they got two first downs on their last drive of the second quarter, Eberflus was confident in his TV interview going into the locker room, telling reporter Tracy Wolfson that the offense “is going to pop in the second half.” Even Nantz was trying to stifle his laughter.
But damned if the Bears offense didn’t start popping and the defense kept holding its own, and they went from getting shut out to having a chance to win the game, or at the very least send it to overtime.
For the game to end the way it did with Eberflus holding a timeout and getting caught with a dopey expression on his face on the sideline, well, you can’t come back from this embarrassment. You just can’t.
Given the opportunities to win (and keep his job) that Eberflus has squandered, and given how the players are talking publicly about his losing decisions, the team has made Poles’ decision for him.
“Once I seen the Detroit Lions walking on the field, I’m like, ‘Damn, (what) they doing? What’s going on?’” receiver Keenan Allen told reporters. “I didn’t realize the time had ran out. I’m like the time was running the whole time we didn’t … and then you look up and you realize we got a timeout. And it’s like, ‘Ah…,’ yeah.”
“Like I said, I don’t know why we didn’t take a timeout.”
DJ Moore on the final play of the game. pic.twitter.com/vxScEmEAjL
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) November 28, 2024
The Bears players have been making comments like this since the Washington debacle. If they ever had any faith in their coach, it’s been forgotten.
Who could even take over? The Bears already fired their first offensive coordinator of the season in Shane Waldron. Eric Washington is in his first year here as the defensive coordinator because Eberflus’ DC last year, Alan Williams, resigned under pressure. Does John Fox still own Tom Waddle’s old house? Maybe he could come back and try to improve on his awful coaching record here. Former Bears coach Dave Wannstedt could do it. Heck, radio sideline reporter Jason McKie, the ex-Bears fullback, is the head coach at Carmel High School. He could fill in and interview himself.
It doesn’t really matter. With a little more than a month left, the Bears need to move on and try to salvage some dignity. I’m not sure anyone can take another defeat like this, least of all Eberflus himself.
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(Photo: Quinn Harris / Getty Images)
