It feels all too fitting for this Bears season that "losing on a wildly improbable Hail Mary because one of their players was taunting the crowd and didn't realize the ball was snapped" isn't even the worst loss of the year.
Instead, the Bears lowered the bar once again on Sunday, this time losing in the final seconds after the Packers blocked Cairo Santos' 46-yard field goal as time expired. It came at the end of what looked like Caleb Williams' biggest drive of his young NFL career, and solidified Matt Eberflus as a lame-duck coach who's way in over his head.
RELATED: Matt Eberflus' cowardice cost the Bears their biggest win of the season
Unfortunately, reader, it gets worse. I don't know why you're reading this either. As postgame quotes from both locker rooms started to make their way online, a clearer picture of what happened on the blocked kick started coming together. And if you can believe it, the whole picture is awfully indicting for Eberflus and the Bears' coaching staff.
The Packers were way too confident that they were going to block a Bears' kick on Sunday
Just talked to several players on the Packers FG block unit and all of them said they noticed that Cairo Santos kicked with a low trajectory when doing film study and they expected the Bears to run another a play, which in their opinion, would have made it more difficult to block
— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) November 17, 2024
"We were going to block it," Kenny Clark said after the game. "We talked about TJ or KB blocking a kick all week. They've got holes in their field goal protection, and a couple of them, they got close. We've been talking about it all week, TJ, or one of them getting a block this week. It was a problem. So Coach Rich been telling them all week, and we ended up getting one."
So, to recap: not only did Eberflus decide to get conservative at the worst time possible, setting his players up for a much more difficult game-winning play than it needed to be, but the play that he was settling for wasn't even a strength of theirs. The fact that the Packers' special teams coordinator literally called his shot the night before should be enough for the McCaskeys to reconsider their hard-and-fast rule about not firing coaches in the middle of the season.
Maybe the Packers' special teams deserves credit for doing their homework and being prepared, but they're sure as hell not getting it from this blog. This blog is devoted solely to pointing out how embarassing Eberflus' decisions were on Sunday. And if the Bears have to hear it from Packers players in order for it to really sink in, maybe that's not the worst thing in the world. It just feels like it.