Bears' turnaround enough to save Matt Eberflus' job?

LAKE FOREST, Ill. — It was Nov. 1 and a second assistant on the staff of Chicago Bears head coach Matt Eberflus was parting ways with the team, leaving general manager Ryan Poles with another distraction to address during his post-trade deadline news conference.

This time, running backs coach David Walker was fired for workplace conduct, six weeks after defensive coordinator Alan Williams resigned citing the need to “take care of my health and family.” The Bears’ human resources department was involved in the decision that led to Williams’ resignation, a source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

The Walker news came three days after a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Chargers dropped the Bears to 2-6 and 5-20 under Eberflus in two seasons. Poles was asked whether the Bears had the right head coach in place between mounting losses, staff issues and a perception that the team wasn’t making enough progress two years into a massive rebuild.

“What I see every day, where I see him address the team and I see his approach through adversity, it is stable, man,” Poles said at the time. “And I know in the outside world it doesn’t look like that. And I know it looks like we’re far away. But this dude comes in every day and just keeps chipping away.

“Most teams fold, and they’re not folding. It’s been hard. It’s been really hard, especially from where we started last year, trying to build this and do it the right way. …I see a grown man that has leadership skills to get this thing out of the hole and into where it needs to be.”

Poles isn’t alone in his assessment of Eberflus, who was previously the Indianapolis Colts‘ defensive coordinator. From Tony Dungy, whom Eberflus considers a mentor, to Colts standout cornerback Kenny Moore II, to his current players, Eberflus is well respected, especially on defense, where the Bears have yielded the third-fewest yards per game since Week 5.

But while votes of confidence are nice, the speculation about Eberflus’ future hasn’t subsided. The Bears (5-8) have four games remaining before another franchise-altering offseason that likely will feature the No. 1 overall pick (acquired by trading the top draft pick last year to Carolina), as well as their own selection, which will likely be in the top 10. In a quarterback-deep draft, the picks will dictate whether third-year QB Justin Fields will return. And the Bears might also be headed for their third coaching search in the last five years.

“The wins, that’s the biggest frustration,” Eberflus said last week. “When are you going to get the wins? You keep doing things right, then all of a sudden the wins will come.

“That’s what all of my mentors would tell me when I visited during this process. Just keep doing it right and really focus on the fundamentals and details of doing the job right. Hold guys to standards, don’t let that slip. That’s what we’ve tried to do. Again, I know it’s been slow, and I know the Chicago Bears fans — as we do — want more wins. You can certainly see that momentum starting to change, and we’re certainly optimistic for that.”

That momentum continued Sunday in a 28-13 win over the division-leading Detroit Lions. The Bears, who are 5-4 in their last nine, intercepted Lions quarterback Jared Goff twice, giving them nine picks since Week 10. That’s the most in the NFL.

“Coach Flus is a great coach,” said edge rusher Montez Sweat, who has made a major impact since being acquired from the Washington Commanders in an Oct. 31 trade-deadline deal for a second-round pick. “He keeps us motivated.”

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BEARS SAFETY JAQUAN Brisker was among the first players to leave the visitors locker room at Detroit’s Ford Field on Nov. 19, moments after a 31-26 loss to the Lions. He talked to no one on the team bus as he wrestled with the angst of not being able to finish a team when the defense had done its job. He was tired of hearing how close the Bears were without a win to show for it.

But unlike other losses, something was working. The Bears intercepted Goff three times, sacked him twice and recovered a fumble. Before that, the Bears were averaging 0.9 takeaways per game in their first 10 games, tied for the third fewest in the NFL.

“We know the type of team we are, we know the players that we brought in,” Brisker said at the time. “We just have to trust each other and finish this thing out.”

That goal was put to the test the following week in Minnesota against a Vikings team that had won five of its previous six. After Fields lost a fumble to set up the Vikings at the Bears’ 43-yard line with 3:27 left and a 10-9 lead, the Bears’ defense held. Fields drove the Bears into field goal range, and Cairo Santos made a 30-yard field goal with 10 seconds left to put the Bears on top 12-10, giving Eberflus his first victory against an NFC North team.

The win featured another four takeaways as Chicago picked off Vikings quarterback Joshua Dobbs four times to make it seven picks in two games, the Bears’ most in a two-game span in the last 30 years. Eberflus, who’s been calling the plays since Williams’ departure, was establishing a defensive identity.

“I’ve never seen a head coach run the team and call defensive plays,” Sweat said. “That’s new for me, but a lot of respect for him as a coach.”

With Eberflus calling plays, the Bears have the league’s No. 3 run defense, allowing 3.5 yards per carry in 2023, compared to 4.9 yards per carry last season, which ranked 27th. The Bears are allowing 324.2 yards per game (as opposed to 373.3 under Williams) and have outgained opponents in eight of their last 10 games. They were outgained in 12 of 18 games under Williams.

A big part of the transformation has been Sweat’s presence. Since his arrival in Week 9, Chicago is getting the same pressure rate despite their blitz rate dropping 5%. And the Bears’ pressure rate is 29% with Sweat and 22.6% without him, according to ESPN Stats and Information. Though Chicago has generated the second-fewest sacks (21) through 14 weeks, their QB contact percentage has skyrocketed 9% since Sweat’s arrival while their interception rate jumped up 3%, a result of blitzing less and having more defenders in coverage.

“Yeah, I think it’s a big deal,” Eberflus said Sunday, after the first back-to-back wins of his tenure. “It’s been a long time coming. To win two in a row, and it’s two division opponents, which is big, the guys are super excited, but we could feel this coming.

“The guys always stayed together. There was never a point where the morale was bad or the guys didn’t have that. I told them that in the room. I said, I appreciate their leadership because they hung together through adversity.”

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EVERY TWO WEEKS, Dungy sits on a conference call with Eberflus and a handful of other coaches. Dungy also checks in with the Bears coach one-on-one a handful of times during the season.

“It’s really mostly to tell him to continue to stay on course and don’t worry about other things that are outside,” Dungy said. “And Matt’s got a great capacity for that. He’s got a great capacity to stay focused and to get his team zeroed in on what’s really important.”

Eberflus has pointed to the need for “extreme patience” as part of his team’s growing process. It’s a quality he says he didn’t master until he earned his first defensive coordinator job as a 29-year-old at Missouri in 2001. It required balancing his intensity for expected results with measuring the growth of his players by increments, a quality he carried into his career in the NFL.

“We wanted to run through a wall for Flus, and I feel like we had one hell of a run as a unit and [with our] relationship,” said Moore, who leads Indy with three interceptions and is third on the team with 81 tackles. “Just knowing him now, just from the way that his coach and player relationship was, I think that’ll go beyond the game.”

If they haven’t already, the Bears will soon need to decide whether the team’s trajectory is solid enough to entrust another major piece of the rebuild to Eberflus.

“I see a team that believes in their coach, they believe in the system, and that’s really the most important thing,” Dungy said. “You can be winning games and you don’t have what it’s going to take to win a championship.

“You can be making improvements, and the team buys in. It doesn’t show up on the scoreboard, but you can feel it and you can see it. And hopefully everybody in the building feels that.”

ESPN Indianapolis Colts reporter Stephen Holder contributed to this report.