Ranking Matt Eberflus’ worst avoidable Bears losses, including 2 backbreaking Hail Marys
No one likes cliches, but the margin between most NFL teams is actually quite minimal. If you peruse the leaguewide scoreboard on any given Sunday, you’ll find that most games are usually within one possession for a reason. More importantly, most games are often decided late in the fourth quarter.
This makes late-game management by coaches paramount. How a coach plays things in the fourth quarter is almost always the singular difference between winning and losing. Whether they’re conservative or aggressive on offense and defense. Whether they use their timeouts in a prudent fashion. Whether they get everyone organized and focused for game-deciding plays. All of this process matters.
All of it.
In today’s NFL, no one fails at this task more than Chicago Bears head coach Matt Eberflus — a man who has flat-out perfected snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. It’s to the point where even when the Bears put in enough of an effort to win, Eberflus will snuff his own players out with unmitigated foolishness. Eberflus now has eight losses where the Bears had at least an 80 percent win probability in the fourth quarter since he became Chicago’s coach in 2022. They’ve blown five games where they had at least a 90 percent win probability. The odds of losing all those games are literally 1 in 68 million. Good lord.
No wonder the Bears’ brain trust will very likely fire Eberflus very soon.
Because I’m a masochist, I’ve ranked the six worst Eberflus losses as Bears coach where a win was in hand. When you comb through this, dearest readers, understand that you are dealing with an artist who has a keen expertise in killing the vibe of his own team (hey, D.J. Moore!). Eberflus is unmatched in this regard.
Let’s (sigh) dive in.