CHICAGO (670 The Score) – For the third time this season, the Bears did what they so uniquely do.
They lost a football game Sunday on the final play, a 30-27 stunner to the Vikings at Soldier Field, which ripped fans' hearts through their throats by redefining agony and reminding us all how many ways they can find to lose.
The Bears somehow rallied from a 27-16 deficit with 1:47 to go and forced overtime, only to succumb to Parker Romo’s 26-yard walk-off field goal.
They simply blew it early and often, then again late, losing another winnable game, getting way too comfortable in the basement of the NFC North.
But it's like they fell down the stairs to get there. Again.
The Bears don't do normal. They do numbing. They invent new methods to end up with the same old result, batting down hope as if it was a Cairo Santos field-goal attempt, ruining another Grabowski family Thanksgiving.
If the Bears could market their brand of misery, the McCaskeys could pay for the next stadium themselves and still have enough left over to pay off everyone who's getting fired.
That list of names of people likely to get fired got no shorter Sunday, by the way.
Former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron already has left the building, so you can no longer blame him, not after he was fired two weeks ago with 2 1/2 seasons and $5 million left on his contract, according to a source.
Matt Eberflus certainly did nothing against the Vikings to decrease his odds as the next NFL head coach to go, even if he’s under contract for two more seasons and owed $9 million. What price, NFL respectability?
Special teams coordinator Richard Hightower entered the chat after Santos had a field-goal attempt blocked for the third time this season and DeAndre Carter muffed a punt, a pair of special teams blunders in a game that went overtime – though the Bears recovering the onside kick with 21 seconds left earned Hightower a tip of the helmet.
And at some point over the next several weeks, speculation will intensify over the future of general manager Ryan Poles, who shouldn't be spared from any discussion over change. His record since arriving in Chicago is also 14-31, the same as Eberflus, and he’s the one who neglected to build the roster from the ball on out.
We all remember how ambitious Poles sounded at Halas Hall when he was introduced in January 2022. He proclaimed the Bears would "take the North and never give it back.” They’re 2-12 in the NFC North since that Poles proclamation with scant evidence they’ll win any of the four remaining division games this year, especially after blowing perhaps their best chance against the Vikings at home.
It gets no easier now, at a time when the strongest part of the team is at its weakest.
The reasons Eberflus' record in one-score games dropped to 5-18 will keep Chicago sports radio buzzing until Thanksgiving, but the biggest one Sunday was this: The defense let the Bears down most.
As many questions as Eberflus the head coach has raised about his performance, Eberflus the defensive coordinator made the Bears far too vulnerable against the Vikings.
The Vikings amassed 452 total yards and were 6-of-13 on third-down conversions, all with the second-best former USC quarterback on the field in Sam Darnold. More damning, the Vikings found a way to complete the game-winning 10-play, 68-yard drive in overtime despite facing second-and-17, first-and-15 and first-and-20. Whatever buttons there were, Eberflus too seldom pushed the right ones.
Too many times, Vikings head coach/offensive guru Kevin O'Connell won the chess match against Eberflus. Example: On the first play of the second half, the Vikings started with personnel that kept the Bears in their base defense with three linebackers on the field. The designed crossing route by Vikings receiver Jordan Addison left him between linebacker T.J.
Edwards and safety Jonathan Owens, and Edwards reacted like he didn't even know the pass was in the air. That play, likely called in the halftime locker room, covered 69 yards.
That reality: The once-daunting Bears defense daunts nobody.
As a result, the biggest justification for Eberflus keeping his job last January – his elite play-calling resuscitated the defense and saved the 2023 season – no longer exists.
Eberflus lost that challenge on the 69-yard pass play because Addison didn't step out of bounds, making Flus 0-for-4 this year and 2-for-9 on challenges in his career, the worst percentage of any active non-first-year NFL head coach, according to ESPN Stats & Info.
All this angst with the Lions looming and the Bears four days away from being thankful only for a mini-bye on the schedule.
That brief window next weekend could be one of opportunity if team president Kevin Warren chooses to open it. The Friday following what figures to be a lopsided loss to the Lions would provide a quieter, softer landing for Eberflus thanks to the long holiday weekend with Chicago's attention diverted from its hapless pro football team.
That's not personal. It's prudent. Eberflus is a good guy, but he's not doing a good job. Arguing that the Bears don't have anybody qualified on staff to serve as an interim head coach is the wrong way to look at it. Here's the right way: Could this painfully unproductive season really get much worse?
Yes, Bears analysts and observers can cling to convention by repeating that the Bears never have fired a head coach in season, but what exactly is conventional about this season?
And, don't forget, history seems silly to cite with Warren in the building.
Warren certainly hasn't let a business-as-usual approach stand in his way when pursuing his passion of building a stadium on the lakefront, for instance. Ask anybody associated with the project. If not for Warren, there likely would've been shovels in the dirt already in Arlington Heights, where the Bears already spent $197 million to own 326 acres of land. There was nothing conventional in ignoring that purchase to pursue ways to stay on the lakefront.
The point: If Warren wants Eberflus fired to reduce the amount of negative publicity in what looks like a dreadful December, it will happen. If Warren cares about the Bears' image as much as many suspect, then the man hired to polish the organization's image will realize it remains full of smudges. Then, and it's purely speculation, perhaps he could sway the McCaskeys to do something they've never done.
Look at the remaining schedule for the 4-7 Bears, full of one playoff-caliber team after another. It's hard to identify a game this Bears team can win.
That said, Caleb Williams played well enough against the Vikings to think he’ll always give the Bears a chance.
Williams completed 32 of 47 passes for 340 yards – allowing him to break the Bears' rookie record for passing yards in a season. He scrambled craftily for 33 rushing yards. Most indelibly, he led two late fourth-quarter scoring drives by being "Superman" in the way offensive coordinator Thomas Brown told him through the headset. The most clutch throw came on a 27-yarder to DJ Moore that set up Santos' game-tying 48-yard field goal on the final play of regulation, capping the most un-Bears-like comeback.
You knew Williams left an impression when O'Connell, a quarterback whisperer, whispered encouragement into his ear after the game long enough to notice.
Williams might not be winning games as a rookie, but he’s earning respect.
"His message was just to keep going,” Williams said.
"He said it sucks that he has to go against me for awhile ...Those encouraging words are important.”
The day included plenty of teaching moments too, such as the 12-yard sack Williams took on the second play from scrimmage in overtime instead of throwing the ball away.
Back in the third quarter, with the Bears down 17-10 and going for it on fourth-and-4, Williams learned another hard lesson about communication. It wasn't his fault, but he didn't hear Brown's play in a chaotic pre-snap sequence that included the field-goal unit running on and then off the field.
"I've got to do a better job of communicating with the field-goal team,” Eberflus said. "I've got to do a better job of communicating everything to everybody.”
On that, a city agrees.
Something keeps getting lost in translation and, while fate plays a role in any NFL team having three walk-off losses, it becomes harder to blame bad luck when a head coach makes so many questionable decisions.
Was it Eberflus' fault that Carter muffed a punt? Or that Jaylon Johnson committed a key pass interference penalty? Or that Cole Kmet, Keenan Allen and D’Andre Swift all had drops? Did the Bears going for a two-point conversion while trailing 24-16 kill their momentum? Why so many bad challenges?
It isn’t fair to pin those mistakes on a coach, but in the NFL, good teams hire coaches whose decisions and approach overcome the bad luck that every team encounters. That's the reason those difference-making, culture-changing coaches like, say, Jim Harbaugh, make so much money.
Instead, the Bears currently employ a coach in the midst of his second five-game losing streak in three years.
His Bears haven't won a game in 42 days.
Feels longer.
David Haugh is the co-host of the Mully & Haugh Show from 5-10 a.m. weekdays on 670 The Score. Click here to listen. Follow him on Twitter @DavidHaugh.
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