Bear Digest

Matt Eberflus' Hyman Roth Moment

Job security questions merely part of the business Bears coach has chosen.
Gene Chamberlain|
Matt Eberflus' Hyman Roth Moment
Matt Eberflus' Hyman Roth Moment

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Chicago Bears

If it only seems like a few years since questions about job security came flying at the Bears head coach, it's because it was.

Then it was Matt Nagy. This time if's for Matt Eberflus in Year 2 of the rebuild.

Asked Wednesday at Hall if he's feeling job security pressure to show progress, Eberflus gave a rather direct answer on a tough topic, digressing slightly first but then getting to the point.

"Yeah, I could see progress and I told the player in the meeting that we can show 'em that," Eberflus said. "We can show them real, tangible progress. It's our charge to take that next step."

As for the job pressure situation?

"In terms of the pressure thing—really that's the NFL, right?" he said. "It's about executing. It's a week-to-week league. The story of the world's written every single week. So that's the way it goes and that's where you’re at.

"That's the life we live and I've been living it a long time. That's the way it goes."

You could almost hear Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth telling Al Pacino as Michael Coreleone: "This is the business we've chosen."

An inconsistent offense hasn't been the only problem for the Bears. 

While they've stopped the run fairly well, they've been largely inconsistent as a defense against the pass and it led to last Sunday's disaster in Detroit at game's end.

Eberflus calls the defensive inconsistency something he and coaches are addressing in the most basic way.

"Yeah, you just got to hone in and do a good job with coaching the details and guys wiring in to the details," Eberflus said. "That’s what you do. You always got something where you got to fix or something you got to work on as a coach and as a player and really as a human being, right. 

"So you got to really focus on the details of that and make an emphasis of it and that's how you get better."

Now the question at Halas Hall is whether the powers that be buy all of it and feel the same way after seeing two big leads in the second half of games turn into losses.

More important is whether they'll feel that way at season's end.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

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