Bears have fired Matt Eberflus

[spudbear]

Late to the news - after not hearing anything this morning I forgot about it until about an hour ago. Well, that and it was my anniversary today. I can understand Poles-Warren-McCaskey not having met Thursday night after the game but waiting until this morning as it was a holiday and they have a long week to prepare. They needed some time to hash this all out, hence the standard Flus presser in the morning and team practice. McCaskey may have wanted to sleep on the decision overnight too.

As far as Flus starting this season as HC as well as staying HC throughout this year, some promises may have been made at the start of his tenure. Particularly having to take on a team in rebuild and being given time to work through the process. Was there an "at least 3 year promise"? Flus saved his job at the end of last season and it may have even been McCaskey giving him those assurances.

I hope we never see this high of a steaming load dumped on a field due to coaching. A lost season.

[Rusty Trombagent]

If it was Brown then it'd have to be his call, but despite being 4-8 we're still 241 points scored to 240 conceded, which is crazy to say we've shitcanned a coach mid season for the first time. Which is to say that if we play the rest of the season well enough for Brown to be considered then there's probably a decent case to be made for keeping some continuity. Still I can't see it happening, there seems to be a decent amount of bad blood built up and, unfairly or otherwise, getting a new DC in to take on a talented group is probably the likely outcome.

Malk here's a reddit thread for you.

[artbest01]

Imo, in the unlikely event that happens, Brown gets the job and the freedom to reshape the staff - in partnership with Ryan Poles

quote=G08 post_id=401893 time=1732917417 user_id=59]
I am curious... if Thomas Brown goes 3-2 to close out the season and the defense plays better, is there a chance that we run it back with the same coaching staff next season?
[/quote]

[Hero]

Yeah I think this had to be done but I think the defense is going to suffer more than it has been the last couple of weeks. Flus was a good DC.

[HisRoyalSweetness]

"This will be a day long remembered.
It has seen the end of Eberflus.
It will soon see the end of close game disasters."

[G08]

Yeah I think this had to be done but I think the defense is going to suffer more than it has been the last couple of weeks. Flus was a good DC.

Agreed. I liked the adjustments they made on defense against the Lions.

[BearsFanInMN]

Yeah I think this had to be done but I think the defense is going to suffer more than it has been the last couple of weeks. Flus was a good DC.

He was. But I think he lost the D awhile ago. It’s been bizarre with Stevenson since the Hail Mary. Jaylon Johnson obviously doesn’t like him. Brisker is just throwing out bizarre tweets. Gordon had to bite his tongue to not throw him under the bus yesterday.

[RichH55]

It was getting to the had to be done point.

Personally don't really care abut the Zoom thing. At all.

IN fairness I also didn't care when they curb stomped the Smoke Screen on Draft Day at the Fans party (or whatever that was)

[Shadow]

Eberflus lost the locker room by not admitting to his faults and mistakes. his continuous denials of wrong doing and throwing others under the bus directly or indirectly doomed him. An admission of guilt and accepting responsibility for his indecision's could have gone a long way to keeping things going. His inability to accept any blame was just unforgivable in professional sport of any kind.

[malk]

If it was Brown then it'd have to be his call, but despite being 4-8 we're still 241 points scored to 240 conceded, which is crazy to say we've shitcanned a coach mid season for the first time. Which is to say that if we play the rest of the season well enough for Brown to be considered then there's probably a decent case to be made for keeping some continuity. Still I can't see it happening, there seems to be a decent amount of bad blood built up and, unfairly or otherwise, getting a new DC in to take on a talented group is probably the likely outcome.

Malk here's a reddit thread for you.

He's just not is he, the tank year counts and Fox had a worse overall record from the tankers and arguably was worse in game...

[malk]

Eberflus lost the locker room by not admitting to his faults and mistakes. his continuous denials of wrong doing and throwing others under the bus directly or indirectly doomed him. An admission of guilt and accepting responsibility for his indecision's could have gone a long way to keeping things going. His inability to accept any blame was just unforgivable in professional sport of any kind.

Normally losing the locker room includes a significant loss in performance which we didn't see, but the rumours coming out... well there's too much smoke for there not to be a fire!

[dplank]

…and so endeth the debate on if Flus was a good hire or not 3 years ago. Official verdict: No.

Also endeth the debate on if we should have replaced him this past offseason. Official verdict: Yes.

Let us memorialize these failures and look forward to the next ones!

I was right on both counts, which is rare as I’m usually wrong on these things, so I’ll enjoy my baby claps and look forward to my next Getsy level miss.

[HurricaneBear]

…and so endeth the debate on if Flus was a good hire or not 3 years ago. Official verdict: No.

Also endeth the debate on if we should have replaced him this past offseason. Official verdict: Yes.

Let us memorialize these failures and look forward to the next ones!

I was right on both counts, which is rare as I’m usually wrong on these things, so I’ll enjoy my baby claps and look forward to my next Getsy level miss.

Happy hes gone. My least favorite coach we've trotted out by a large margin. I now know how the people on the opposite side of the Justin Fields wars felt when I defended him. I have plans to hold onto the next coach even longer then I did Nagy tho. Boy was I wrong on McDonald's Matt

[southdakbearfan]

Man, thank god.

[UOK]

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/595791 ... ed_article

Pretty good read on the mess. Eberflus lost the defense when he dismissed the importance of the 13-yard play before the Hail Mary. Everything he said afterward about accountability rang hollow to players. Jaylon Johnson lost his shit at Eberflus after the Thanksgiving game to the point that Flus left the room.

Warren forced the Waldron firing. Waldron’s entire tenure was a disaster, with players having concerns since install during the summer.

Thomas Brown seems universally respected. Hopefully as coach he continues to impress.

[spudbear]

…and so endeth the debate on if Flus was a good hire or not 3 years ago. Official verdict: No.

Also endeth the debate on if we should have replaced him this past offseason. Official verdict: Yes.

Let us memorialize these failures and look forward to the next ones!

I was right on both counts, which is rare as I’m usually wrong on these things, so I’ll enjoy my baby claps and look forward to my next Getsy level miss.

.
I also had great misgivings about Flus remaining another season but understood that it was part of the rebuild, good or bad, to remain with some sort of stability in the organization. It got too bad, way too bad to continue.

IIRC, a former poster here @The Marshall Plan was vehemently anti-Flus. It would have been interesting to hear his comments just after the Lions game and after the Flus launch.

[Noots]

IIRC, a former poster here @The Marshall Plan was vehemently anti-Flus. It would have been interesting to hear his comments just after the Lions game and after the Flus launch.

Brilliant or similarly warped minds think alike. Just before reading your post, I fired off a PM to TMP, not sure if he’d ever read it. Title of the PM was “You were right.”

Here’s the message:

Hey man. Doesn’t seem you post around here anymore. Not sure if you took a hiatus or if there was a falling out. Must confess I’m not on enough to keep up on the gossip, and I’ve been a Bears mod on preceding boards since the 90s, so I stay as far away from drama as possible.

Anyway, I hope you’re well and you had a good Thanksgiving, albeit spoiled and soiled by Coach Uberflaws.You were right about him needing to go last offseason. His record for finding ways to lose games that were mathematically 90% Bears wins was so significant that I believe I read the chances for him to blow that many was something like 1 in 65 million.

It would be Bears-like for us to stumble upon Thomas Brown in the wake of firing Shane Waldron, who I can tell you I thought was going to be good for Caleb and I was totally wrong about. I don’t know what it is about the OC position in Chicago, but it’s like they put them up in a hotel room and feed them some kind of nerve gas that turns their brains to mush. Sure, let’s have the poor kid throw it 50 times behind THAT offensive line. I believe we’d still have K. Herbert here, and the overuse of Homer and Everett the first few weeks are what led to that stupid loss to Indi. With Roschon getting hurt last week, don’t you wish we still had Herbert?

There is hope with Coach Brown. I feel like we haven’t felt hope since the HC known for being a “great” DC wasn’t smart enough to call a time out when T. Stevenson was jawing with the crowd in the end zone after blowing the previous play call to set up the Hail Mary. The way he ruined that was epic and the losing hasn’t stopped since.

You can already see some positives with Brown. You actually saw Roschon getting a series or two here and there. How hard is this to do? They had pigeon holed their RBs under Waldron. Herbert could only get a short yardage carry, then Roschon only could. Those two backs could have gotten a series or two to spell Swift. We’re now finally picking up the pace in getting the play in and the ball out of Caleb’s hands before this porous OL gets creased. Braxton Jones is a better OT than the rest of the roster (excluding Wright). But he’s not good enough. He cannot stand his ground. He was the WRONG substitute on that second FG block. I’d be looking to replace the ST Coordinator after that debacle.

The rest of the schedule is daunting and we’ll be underdogs with Vegas the rest of the way. This is perfect, IMHO. It’s win-win for us. We lose out and it’s more high picks. But if Brown is special, he’ll be able to take this roster which has a lot of talent in it and wring out victories from squeezing the orange and navy cloth. He’s a coach. Can he manage the short and close situations better than Eberflus? And run the offense and continue nurturing Caleb? I’d be willing to bet he’ll do a better job than his predecessor but shit is that a low bar, or what?

Time to sit back and see how this plays out from here. I’m hoping we don’t see any more major injuries, as I’d like to be able to truly evaluate the coaching the rest of the way, given the current talent levels. We already know they’re going to need help on the OL and DL in the offseason. They have the cap and draft picks to get it done. The Bears were playing below their talent level. Caleb was the tide raising all ships the last few games but couldn’t overcome Flus’ flaws. Maybe now we’ll see if this team can get it done, even when the rest of the world has counted them out.

Cheers,

Noots

[Bears Whiskey Nut]

I was pro-Flus. My feeling was that we were developing a HC. We saw vast improvements at the end of last season when we went 5-2 or something like that down the stretch. I really expected Eberflus to build off of that momentum. It looked like was going to with a 4-2 start. But then the Washington game happened, and I think that broke him. The level of scrutiny he received was beyond what he could handle, and he started coaching scared. And it snowballed from there. In the end, I’m proud of the franchise for doing what needed to be done, damn the precedent.

The sad thing is, for the fans and players, is that this team could as easily be 8-4 vs its 4-8 record.

[dplank]

I do wish my bud TMP would post here again. IE also. I’ve been unable to convince them

[wab]

I was pretty anti-Flus too. You can ask @G08. I believe I called him a “less exciting Dick Jauron”.

I wanted Quinn.

However I gave him the tank year and started to come around on him at the end of last season. When the Bears were 4-2 going into the Washington game, I thought that maybe things were going to be ok. I didn’t really see that they were winning in spite of Flus (and Waldron). I chalked it up to working through stuff with a new offense and the youngest starting QB in the NFL.

Clearly that wasn’t the case. The Bears would be 8-4 if not for his end of game blunders. And I’d argue they should have 9 wins because they shouldn’t have lost to the Colts.

In the end Flus was a bad hire that I don’t think any of us here really wanted, but convinced ourselves to make the best of it.

[dplank]

[wab]

The newest rumor floating around is that Brisker was put on IR because of a personal disagreement with Flus.

[Bears Whiskey Nut]

The newest rumor floating around is that Brisker was put on IR because of a personal disagreement with Flus.

Wow! It would match up with all of his cryptic tweets though. That’s petty AF if it’s true.

[UOK]

For those wondering about TMP, he heartily earned a ban and won’t be seen around these parts any longer. Believe me when I say we tried to make it work.

[Rusty Trombagent]

In the end Flus was a bad hire that I don’t think any of us here really wanted, but convinced ourselves to make the best of it.

That's kind of the funny thing about this all. I don't think anyone was in the bag for him, but some of us rode with it and tried to give him a fair shake, and some chose to try and read failure in every bit of minutiae to feel validated.

Who fucking cares!

[LacertineForest]

It's interesting going back and looking at threads on this forum about Eberflus.

There's one about Eberflus being an early favorite for Coach of the Year (Not sure why, but don't think he's going to win it, guys ) but the thread after he was retained is a gold mine.

Several of us called out issues with Eberflus, but @Sweetness34's posts really stood out to me as hitting the nail so far on the head that it's almost like he was a time traveler coming back to warn us:

viewtopic.php?t=17864 (these posts are on the 1st and then second pages).

Been stewing on this for an hour and still can't think of anything positive or nice to say. This is unfortunate news and a wasted opportunity to upgrade the talent at our head coach position. Flus is not a good head coach, his W/L record speaks for itself. Yes I realize the "throw away" year and the late season improvement, but the teams they beat weren't exactly good teams, other than Detroit. He won 5 of his last 8 against Carolina, Minnesota, Detroit, Arizona and Atlanta. Hardly a gauntlet. Then there are the 4th quarter collapses against near insurmountable odds to lose those games which has been documented in other threads. Just so disappointed right now... I need a hard drink.

The people that are bemoaning the fact that Flus was retained really confuse me. Granted, I was ready to fire Flus half way through the season, but then the defense really turned around. The players played hard for him. The defense had the best run defense in the league. The problem was the offense. Look back at the last seven games. If we had a competent OC we would have been 10-7, not 7-10 and everyone on this board would be jumping up and down about Matt Eberflus. By my count, our defense put us in a position to win 13 games this year. We won 7.

I won't be able to change your opinion, and that's fine, certainly acceptable for us to have different opinions on Eberflus. I am not trying to change anyone's opinion, just venting my own personal frustrations. The reason I am bemoaning keeping Flus is because I see an opportunity to hire a better coach and because overall I don't feel he is a good head coach. Average at best, but not good. In my opinion, we need a good head coach just like we need good players. I don't feel he is a good head coach for various reasons, but the ones that stick out to me:
1) The losses to Denver, Detroit the first time, and Cleveland. The manner in which those games were lost falls squarely on Eberflus and his end game coaching. To lose one of those games like that, sure, happens to even the best coaches occasionally. But all 3 of them in the same season? Honestly inexcusable.
2) Two of his assistant coaches were let go this year for workplace behavior. Better to fire them than keep them, of course. But I seriously question his ability to assemble a good coaching staff. And again, we need good coaches as much as we need good players. I don't care what profession you are in. When you have 2 subordinates which are terminated for HR level workplace behavior, something is wrong at the top. It is rare to have a leader be kept in situations like that, whether they had direct knowledge or not. It starts with the leader and Flus is the leader of the coaching staff.
3) The last is opportunity. I fully admit to being a big fan of Jim Harbaugh the coach and certainly there is zero guarantee Chicago could get him, but I sure wanted to see them try. And I feel the Bears are a team he would be very interested in joining if he decides to come back to the NFL, which indications are that he does want to return to the NFL. Do you fire Flus just to try to get Harbaugh? No. But since the Bears have announced today they are keeping Flus, they have indicated without announcing that they won't even try for Harbaugh. I was hoping they would try and if they struck out, then maybe keep Flus.

Interestingly enough (depressingly enough?), we might be in the same situation with #3 this year (minus the Harbaugh angle - but you can substitute in another coach), depending on TB's performance as head coach.

[G08]

Apparently Jaylon Johnson FLIPPED OUT on Eberflus after the game. Yikes...

[Magilla_Gorilla]

Apparently Jaylon Johnson FLIPPED OUT on Eberflus after the game. Yikes...

Per the Adam Jahns story in the Athletic - Jaylon Johnson couldn't take it anymore after Eberflus started in on his 'we need to stick together' post game speech. He challenged Eberflus on the timeout and recent decisions and this apparently opened the floodgates for other players to challenge Eberflus directly. Things got so heated that Eberflus walked out of the locker room in the middle of all of it. Warren and others were in the locker-room and it became apparent that Thursdays game was the last straw and Eberflus had lost whatever support he had left.

Warren apparently spent more time than he ever had in the locker-room following the game and took the time to have extended conversations with a number of players.

[spudbear]

Apparently Jaylon Johnson FLIPPED OUT on Eberflus after the game. Yikes...

Per the Adam Jahns story in the Athletic - Jaylon Johnson couldn't take it anymore after Eberflus started in on his 'we need to stick together' post game speech. He challenged Eberflus on the timeout and recent decisions and this apparently opened the floodgates for other players to challenge Eberflus directly. Things got so heated that Eberflus walked out of the locker room in the middle of all of it. Warren and others were in the locker-room and it became apparent that Thursdays game was the last straw and Eberflus had lost whatever support he had left.

Warren apparently spent more time than he ever had in the locker-room following the game and took the time to have extended conversations with a number of players.

For those of you who have questioned Warren, this is what a Team President/CEO does when there are major personnel issues. Players respect having him there to hear what they have to say directly as well as hear him. Poles can come in to the locker room post-game (I believe he usually does) but he has a different relationship with the coaches and players to take into account. Warren may not be handling the new stadium to everybody's satisfaction, but he's still involved with the team's direction.

For those who may not know, besides Warren the Board of Directors include the McCaskeys (Chairman George, Virginia, Patrick, Brian, Ed Jr.) and Pat Ryan. For the players Warren is their link to the Board.

[Bears Whiskey Nut]

Apparently Jaylon Johnson FLIPPED OUT on Eberflus after the game. Yikes...

Per the Adam Jahns story in the Athletic - Jaylon Johnson couldn't take it anymore after Eberflus started in on his 'we need to stick together' post game speech. He challenged Eberflus on the timeout and recent decisions and this apparently opened the floodgates for other players to challenge Eberflus directly. Things got so heated that Eberflus walked out of the locker room in the middle of all of it. Warren and others were in the locker-room and it became apparent that Thursdays game was the last straw and Eberflus had lost whatever support he had left.

Warren apparently spent more time than he ever had in the locker-room following the game and took the time to have extended conversations with a number of players.

Apparently Poles went directly over to Caleb and had a private conversation with him. If I were a betting man, I’d wager he told Caleb that the end of the game was not his fault, and it was only because of his ability/leadership that were even in a position to win the game.