Suffering Fans Asked to Bear a Repeating Cycle

The Bears continue to struggle greatly with timing.

They seem to be caught in a time loop, repeating themselves forever like Bill Murray in Ground Hog's Day. At least it would appear this way considering their solution to their offensive problems going forward.

The firing of offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and quarterbacks coach Andrew Janocko was to be expected. So was retention of coach Matt Eberflus.

The problem is by keeping Eberflus now they have stepped right back into the situation they faced when they hired Matt Nagy and hired Eberflus. The coach in his last year will have a rookie QB he didn't necessarily want. At least this is the case if they draft Caleb Williams.

Eberflus' days would appear to be numbered. He's going to hire an offensive coordinator now who will not be a premium, ideal hire for developing a young quarterback because 2024 will be a win-or-else season for the head coach.

Eberflus' contract expires after the 2025 season so he'd need to prove he can win ahead of the end of 2024. Yet he's going to have to do it with a rookie QB.

A new quarterback is likely to struggle offensively in the rookie's first year, will fail to get into the playoffs, the coaching staff gets fired and voilà, they're right back in 2018 and in 2022. The new head coach has a quarterback with a year experience who needs to be developed, one he didn't necessarily want.

And the time loop continues.

President Follows Precedent

They do have a different team president in Kevin Warren but it seems he has just fallen into the same practice former president Ted Phillips was in, and just kept doing the same old, same old. Warren could have changed everything with a proper reset, getting the head coach, offensive coaches and quarterback in together at the same time. He opted for the Phillips/George McCaskey route and stayed the course.

Warren fell for the idea their defense has improved drastically and is worth continuing under Eberflus.

The problem with this is, while there was defensive improvement, it largely came from the impact of Montez Sweat. When Green Bay found a way to neutralize Sweat's effect, the pass defense looked as vulnerable as it always had before the Bears had a pass rush. It's why they blew three double-digit leads late in games in 2023.

Next year others will follow Green Bay's approach to neutralize Sweat and the defensive improvement will no longer have the impact it had this year. They might even get fewer takeaways. Then the rookie quarterback will have too much on his shoulders and will fail.

The defensive improvement they had also came against quarterbacks Brian Hoyer, Sam Howell, Josh Dobbs, Taylor Heinicke, C.J. Stroud and a struggling Kyler Murray with 4-13 team. They did have Jared Goff's number twice, but Joe Flacco and Jordan Love had no problem dicing up the Bears secondary like QBs they faced early in the season.

Justin Is Their Guy?

There is always the possibliity they've decided not to draft that generational QB talent.

They may have chosen the route fans chanting at Soldier Field wanted and keep Fields while using picks they get for trading away the No. 1 pick to strengthen the team as much as possible.

The logic of strengthening the team is sound in that case. Based on what they got for the first pick last year, this year's bonanza could be even greater or similar.

However, despite all the support by DJ Moore and fans, Fields hasn't shown enough to make anyone think he's going to take to a third coaching staff and suddenly blossom. He actually regressed in many areas this season, as his touchdown rate dropped (4.3%) despite having Moore vailable and his sack percentage being 10.6% when rookie Tyson Bagent had only a 3.4% sack with the same line.

Another problem with keeping Eberflus and not resetting the whole mess is he won't have as wide a variety of potential offensive coordinators to choose from because of his contract status.

With his deal expiring in 2025, good coordinator candidates will want stability like you get when you're hired with a new staff. The only way to offset this is to give Eberflus a contract extension.

Would they actually do this after a 7-10 season?

If not, there are a few veteran candidates floating around who might take them up on the chance to be back in the league even if only for a year.

Once you get past the obvious one, Eberflus' good friend and former boss Frank Reich, a popular name is Greg Roman because he devised an offense to use with a running quarterback. He helped Lamar Jackson become MVP.

However Eberflus seemed to want to improve the passing game at season's end, not the quarterback's running.

"We got some good shots down the field from Justin," Eberflus said at season's end. "He made some good connections with DJ and Cole (Kmet) this year, and again we just have to continue to improve that."

And they improve it by bringing in an offensive coordinator who was fired ultimately in Baltimore because he didn't do a good enough job of this with Jackson?

Eberflus and Williams

It all seems to add up to giving Eberflus the last year with a coordinator of his choosing who might not be the best available, and with a rookie quarterback and not Fields.

When the inevitable firing occurs next year at this time and the whole cycle is repeated, it's not too much of a reach to expect everyone to be gone, including GM Ryan Poles, because then Warren would want his own people in place at every job.

Hopefully at that point they could hire a new coach and GM not named Matt and Ryan.

At least then the cycle they're stuck in wouldn't be as obvious to everyone.

The only problem would be putting the first-year quarterback with new coaches who didn't want him.

If Williams is half as good as scouts say, then perhaps all the silly hiring and firing of people out of place and time would fade away as a real passing game develops.

A savior at quarterback has always been the dream of Bears fans and at this point it looks like the only thing that's going to get them out of NFL Ground Hog's Day.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven