(670 The Score) The tortured Bears optimism that still existed last week is an embarrassing look right now after their latest disaster on the road.
Matt Eberflus is well into his third season as head coach in Chicago, and his teams still have yet to win a road game on a Sunday, with this one ending up 29-9 in favor of the Arizona Cardinals, who are at least a nominal playoff contender if well less than a good team.
It comes after the second quasi-mutiny of the season, the first spurring an emergency players' meeting with offensive coordinator Shane Waldron after the Bears’ loss to the Colts on Sept. 22 and the latest after a Hail Mary meltdown in Washington last Sunday that resulted in Tyrique Stevenson being demoted from the starting lineup, then reportedly walking out of a team walkthrough in a fit of pique. While he was doing that, his coaches were busy insisting that they wouldn't do anything differently, that the team would put it behind them, grow from it and be better for it.
Accepting that possibility was a sucker's game, after half of the Bears' eight captains had already publicly decried both coaching decisions and the actions of their teammate. Meanwhile, their coach's supposed 24-hour rule about dwelling on the previous outcome turned into almost 160 hours of well-earned recrimination and ongoing concern. These things don't happen on healthy teams once, let alone again in such short order and more intensely and pointedly the next time.
If last week was a crossroads, this is a crisis.
Eberflus is clearly out of ideas, only able to lean on a rote recitation of clichés that he appears to only half-believe. His stubborn defiance of the correct criticism of his game management will only now cause it to mount after his very next chance at an end-of-half defensive redemption resulted in another inexcusable result, this time a 53-yard touchdown run by Cardinals reserve running back Emari Demercado that effectively blew open the game just before halftime. The Bears called a pass pressure, had defenders out of assigned gaps and the deep safeties both stopped their feet.
Waldron couldn't protect his quarterback, didn't scheme receivers open, abandoned a once-effective screen game and forgot one of the NFL's best tight ends was on his active roster.
And both of them allowed Caleb Williams to keep taking sacks and hits behind a bad offensive line until he limped off the field with ankle discomfort of some kind at the bitter and certain end.
We and they talk constantly about accountability, to the point that the discussion has become obvious self-parody. Stevenson was benched, but Eberflus couldn't be confident and secure enough to actually say he was when he obviously had made the decision. Other players are clowning their superiors on all the airwaves while general manager Ryan Poles dithers.
Virginia and George McCaskey hired Eberflus with the intention of instilling discipline and professionalism, ostensibly to lay the mere foundation for actual winning. It has come to whatever this is, now, with the latest handpicked leader inspiring his team and all of us with gems like what he told CBS his motivational words were to his team coming out of halftime:
"Hey, this is what the score is, and we have each other,” Eberlus said. “And that's what we're gonna do."
I also have no clue what that could possibly mean.
The Bears don’t make coaching changes in season because the Bears don’t make coaching changes in season. You'd appropriately call that out as a glaring tautology if we cared enough to change some of the words, but it's fact until it isn't.
Any early goodwill for and from Matt Eberflus has been burned, and any amassed political capital has been thrown away in a whirlwind of stupidity and chaos that recalls far too many predecessors.
Whether the Bears recognize or acknowledge it – or even possibly act on it or not – we know it.
Dan Bernstein is the co-host of the Bernstein & Harris Show on middays from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on 670 The Score. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.
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