Which Chicago Bears were duds during Week 4 vs. Broncos?
At this point, Chicago Bears fans are left speechless. By speechless I mean angrier than ever and wondering how it just keeps getting worse. for 45 minutes the Chicago Bears had fans exclaiming all over the place that they were back and things were going to finally turn around. That goes to show the decimation of hope this season. A few competent drives on offense and Bears fans are basically shouting from the rooftops. Not so fast, Chicago.
The Chicago Bears continue to be the bringer of their own doom
Winning a football game requires knowing how to win a football game. This team does not know how to do that. Instead, it was another loss on the season bringing them to 0-4 on the year and 0-14 in their last fourteen games going back to last year.
Chicago Bears Week 4 Dud No. 1: Matt Eberflus
After 21 total games as a head coach in the NFL, Matt Eberflus is 3-18. His football team has not won a game since October a year ago. His plan for the Chicago Bears has not worked yet, and unfortunately for him, there is too much talent on this team to wait for whatever it is he thinks will happen with said plan.
Obviously, this team is nowhere near contention. Any Bears fan who expected this team to be a playoff contender was just wrong. With that said, this team has enough talent to be competitive. The offense has stars, and the defense is athletic enough to make up for some talent deficiencies. For some reason, it seems impossible to get things together for the Bears. That starts with the head coach. Matt Eberflus, if he was not on the hot seat already, is on a burning stool right now. If the Bears were to fire a coach in the middle of a season, this might be the year that happens.
At this point, it cannot get any worse. Nobody they would bring in or promote to head coach could be worse than what Matt Eberflus has done so far in his Bears tenure. The locker room is not bought into his schemes anymore and players are visually and verbally frustrated. To culminate this, Eberflus completely messed up the Bears' chance to potentially win the game with his terrible decision-making in the fourth quarter.
The Bears had fourth-and-one on the Denver Broncos' 18-yard line late in the fourth quarter. It was either kick a field goal to take the lead and hope that the Bears could keep Denver out of the endzone or go for it to try and ice the game. Eberflus first decides to try to draw them offsides and then burns a timeout. Standard procedure that we have seen many times in that situation.
Most expected them to just kick it at that point since they had already wasted the timeout. Nope. Eberflus trots the offense back out there and his partner-in-crime of poor situational decision-making Luke Getsy calls an inside handoff from the shotgun right behind Lucas Patrick and Cody Whitehair. Those are the two worst offensive linemen this year, but sure running behind them on the biggest play of the game from the gun is the way to go.
Eberflus needs to take the points there. Sure, it's fourth and one and they should be able to get one yard. But if they were going to go for it why lose a timeout and play the mind games? It was too much overthinking by Eberflus that cost the Bears three points and a lead. Nobody knows what would have happened once Denver got the ball back, but it would have been with the Bears most likely leading by three instead of tied with all of the momentum on the Broncos' side. This was a moment that sums up the Eberflus era so far in Chicago, and for the sake of the franchise and the fans, it might be time to hasten the end of that era.