Long Bears Closer Provides Fitting Season's End

Big season-ending press conferences like the Bears held Wednesday almost alway produce dissatisfaction.

They do these every season in recent memory except when they went to the Super Bowl and about the only one ending with positive feeling by everyone came after the 2005 season when they won the NFC North and were ascending.

After their 2010 NFC Championship Game loss, everyone was still too upset about the Jay Cutler knee injury to have good feelings. In 2018 an overriding good feeling about the season itself existed but everyone was still too angry at Cody Parkey to smile.

So when the Bears somehow stretched 1 1/2 hours of press conference out of why they didn't fire the coach, why they fired the offensive coordinator and how they wouldn't talk about the quarterback situation, there were plenty of bad feelings.

There were going to be, any way you sliced it. If they had fired coach Matt Eberflus, some people would have been irritated he didn't get a fair shake after a season when the GM gutted the roster and only one year with a legitimate team that came on strong at season's end.

Because they didn't fire him, there were the usual witch hunters storming the social media gates with torches and pitchforks calling for the heads of Eberflus, GM Ryan Poles and even president Kevin Warren.

If the Bears had announced they were trading Justin Fields, all those people who chanted his name at Soldier Field in Week 17 would have been enraged, along with teammates. And if they said they were keeping and trading the first pick, all those who want to see Caleb Williams lead a real NFL passing attack would have been mad.

It was a darned-if-you-do, darned-if-you-don't situation if ever one existed.

Harbaugh Situation Predictable

The fact no one called Jim Harbaugh may have shocked some.

"No, I haven't talked to Jim," Poles said, sounding a bit put out, if not surprised, someone asked him. "He's the coach at Michigan."

This question should have been expected, though, after the way the Bears waited three days until after the season to reveal their plans. It led to plenty of speculation something was up. And Harbaugh was what was up at that point in the minds of most people because of his team's national title. It seemed an obvious tie. It wasn't.

Asked to explain further, Poles said, "Like I said, we're going with Matt, and I gave the reasons why. I didn't go talk to anybody."

This wasn't entirely convincing. Kevin Warren didn't really explain it, other than express support for Eberflus.

Another weak point came when Poles said he liked how Eberflus steered the team through those fabled stormy seas this past season, referring to the losing sterak and the assistant coaches who were dismissed and fired. The problem was, Eberflus helped put them in the storm because it was his team blowing games with big leads and the assistants he hired who were being shown the door.

Still, this wasn't the worst answer to come out of another disappointing season-ender.

Poles was asked why he had confidence in his coach to oversee the hiring of new coaches with a plan to work with Fields or develop a rookie."

"Yeah, just like I talked about, it starts with the leadership piece, it starts with his knowledge of the game, and then the ability to hire coaches and make sure we have a really good process and we bring in the right types of people that can put those plans together to help our guys take that next step," Poles said.

An entire stadium of Bear Fans were screaming We Want Fields over and over to end the home season, but some dude on X SWEARS he’s about to be traded.
— KareBear 🐻🏈 (@situationbears) January 12, 2024

Yes, Poles said this on a day when Eberflus fired almost half the coaching staff he'd hired two years earlier, in a year when they had already fired another assistant and had a coordinator quit under fire.

Yet, they have confidence in Eberflus' ability to hire coaches? Based on?

Offensive line coach Chris Morgan and tight ends coach Jim Dray are all that remain from that first offensive staff. They kept the offensive line coach after the Bears gave up 58 and 50 sacks the last two seasons.

If Eberflus is a coach hiring savant, we've yet to see it. Jon Hoke was a good hire, but it was after the other cornerbacks coach left and everyone knew this would work because he'd been with Chicago under Lovie Smith.

At least when it comes to this, the best answers from the press conference offset this bad one.

Eberflus was talking about where everything stands now after two seasons and said, "As we look at this whole season, we're playin' the long game on this. There’s a long game to this, right?"

The long game has merits, but after two years, the long game is in the past.

Now the winning must come forward, and both Poles and Warren made certain this is clear.

Direct Message Communicated

"First of all, our standard is always going to be to win the division and we're starting to chip at that," Poles said. "That's what made that last (Green Bay) game disappointing, too, because I thought there was an opportunity to split that (NFC North games) in half and take three there. That's always going to be our expectations. But this team is ready to take the next step and we always have high expectations of what we should be."

His warning wasn't the only one.

Warren who spoke about how his third year in St. Louis was where it all came together for a Super Bowl team after two losing seasons.

"Again, you think about it, he's been here for 24 months," Warren said. "This job is difficult enough, but in studying businesses, studying professional sports team, studying especially NFL teams, it just seems like that third year is a critical year for having things start to meld."

Warren had one other good answer working in this direction. He said there have been no discussions about contract extensions for Eberflus. That puts action behind the words. The third year has to be the winning year because a coach doesn't work the final year of a contract without an extension.

They better get to "melding" really fast under that new coaching staff Eberflus is going to so adeptly hire, because the long game is gone.

It's all about the short game now or else.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven