It's a Must-Win Season for 2024

Matt Eberflus has been set up for the classic win-or-else season with a huge vote of confidence.

Not even the presence of Jim Harbaugh as a potential candidate kept GM Ryan Poles or team president Kevin Warren from wavering in support of Eberflus for 2024 because of what they believe he accomplished this past season with a 7-10 Bears team that started 2-7.

So now the Bears coach must deliver the expected wins in Season 3 and this was apparent in Wednesday's season-ending press conference.

"You go back to my first job in the NFL," Warren said. "I mean, my first year in the NFL, we were 5-11 at the St. Louis Rams, second year we were 4-12.

"Then the third year we ended up going 16-3 and winning the Super Bowl. And I remember many of those days having conversations with John Shaw, our president, Jay Zygmunt, our executive vice president, coach (Dick) Vermeil."

Eberflus' Bears were 3-14 and 7-10 and Warren said the St. Louis situation taught him "...the worst thing you can do on an organization that is making progress is to turn around too quickly," he said.

"This is reminiscent of the process that we went through in St. Louis," Warren added. "It’s reminiscent of the process that we went through in Minnesota; you know, 6-10, 8-8, 10-6, 12-4. And there were many a times that we were in meetings and that we would say we’re not making enough progress too quickly and we would have to take a step back and say, but are we on the right track? Do we have the right people? And are we focused on the right things? And as I sit here today, unequivocally, I believe that we have the right set of individuals and my expectations going into this season are extremely high."

So they won't change. They'll go ahead with Eberflus as coach even after a tough loss Sunday in Green Bay because, Warren said, "...we're pointed in the right direction."

Where they expect Eberflus to get the team next is a vague target of more wins but also a division title, not necessarily the Lombardi Trophy like in Warren's example.

"Other than our annual goal, which is to win the division and be a championship-caliber team, that's what we're going to aim for, but yes, win more," Poles said.

Still, it was clear they want results this year.

"I’m not saying a lot of time, but I strongly believe that this third year, going into this third year is going to be a critical time for us to take a major jump," Warren said.

The Harbaugh situation was ideally set up for the Bears if they wanted to make the move. At least, they could have contacted their 1987 first-round draft pick to see if he would be interested in leaving the national champions to coach the team he played for from 1987-93.

"I haven't talked to Jim," Poles said. "He's the coach at Michigan."

That's because they were sold on Eberflus.

"I didn’t go talk to anybody," Poles added.

The decision the Bears made on Eberflus was basically one Poles made with assistance from his advisors, in this case Warren and board chairman George McCaskey.

"Yeah, so it's my call and what I do is I get with George and Kevin and give my input and the nice thing about this is we were all on the same page," he said.

Poles sees Eberflus as a leader the Bears can continue to build around after he got them through what Warren termed, "crisis" situations.

Among those were the loss of defensive coordinator Alan Williams and former running backs coach David Walker, as well as a 14-game losing streak.

"Just in terms of his leadership and stability, I really think that the head coach needs to be able to captain the ship when the seas are stormy or when the seas have storms, and really keep everything settled," Poles said. "When you go through hard times and he can keep everyone together, to me, that's like the critical piece.

"In a big market like this, you have to be strong. I mean, if he's jumping off the boat and everyone else starts jumping off the boat, it's a hot mess."

Besides stability, there were other reasons.

"The detail that he coaches with," Poles said. "Taking some of the mistakes from the game, bringing them to practice and making sure that we're doing things the right way, I saw a lot of progress in that. There's a reason why we went from three to seven wins. There are.

"The player aspect of it is important but also the detail and bringing the team together, sticking through those hard times allowed us to push through and you saw a lot of those wins happening towards the back end of the season. If it's not for him, I really don't think that’s the case. I think it starts to crumble; everyone starts to do their own thing."

Warren set the Bears and Eberflus up with another goal next year when he described what happened to him after Sunday's 17-9 loss at Green Bay.

Warren said he had left the security tab on a briefcase from the game.

"I didn't cut it off until yesterday," Warren said. "I wanted to look at it for a couple days and try to still get the dirt and gravel out of my mouth to say, you know, that wasn't a good taste.

"I even said it on the elevator to a group of people. I said, you know, the plan is we're not gonna have this feeling anymore."

Consider that one among the games the Bears are going to need to win if Eberflus is to meet expectations in Year 3.

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