Matt Eberflus botched Bears-Packers ending with more coaching mistakes

Why Matt Eberflus cost the Bears late against the Packers with more coaching mistakes

The most consistent thing about the Chicago Bears under the leadership of head coach Matt Eberflus has been their unbreakable resolve to lose winnable games. The Bears’ issues started way before Jayden Daniels’ Hail Mary broke their spirit and their season in Week 8, but somehow it keeps getting worse.

The Green Bay Packers delivered the Bears another heartbreaking loss, 20-19, at the buzzer of their Week 11 matchup. When kicker Cairo Santos lined up for a 46-yard field goal to win the game, Chicago looked like it was poised to finally beat their archival for the first time since 2018. Green Bay blocked the kick to defeat the Bears for the 11th straight time in the NFL’s most one-sided rivalry.

Caleb Williams put the Bears in position to win the game on the team’s final drive. After taking two sacks to begin the possession, Williams made a brilliant play on 3rd-and-19 to roll out and find fellow rookie Rome Odunze for a big chunk of yards. Williams picked up the fourth down on the next play by finding Odunze again, then hit Keenan Allen on an out route to put Chicago in field goal range.

The Bears could have gotten even closer for the field goal, but Eberflus again botched the late game management.

Green Bay used its final timeout with 35 seconds left after Bears RB Roschon Johnson gained two yards up the middle. Chicago still had one timeout left, and had plenty of time to rush up and spike the ball if they wanted to stop the clock again. The Bears could have run a couple more plays to get closer for the field goal, or even tried to score a touchdown. Instead, Eberflus let the clock tick down, comfortable with Santos trying a 46-yarder. It was stuffed on a strong rush up the middle.

After the game, Eberflus said he didn’t want to risk a fumble by running more plays before the field goal.

“You could say you could do that for sure, maybe get a couple more yards, but you’re also going to risk fumbling and different things there,” Eberflus told reporters. “We felt where we were, if we’re at the 36 or 35, you definitely want to do that because you want to get it inside there. I felt very confident where we were at that time with the wind and where we were on the field.”

A few yards can make all the difference on a field goal, even if 46 yards is a makable distance. A longer kick requires a lower angle off the kicker’s foot to get the extra distance. That’s all the Packers needed to block the kick.

For his career, Santos had never missed a field goal under 40 yards. His percentages get a lot worse once you back up past 45 yards. Meanwhile, the chances of fumbling in that situation are astronomically low. Here are the numbers, via ESPN.

Packers players said they noticed Santos had a low trajectory on his kicks during film study. When Eberflus decided to settle for the 46-yarder instead of trying to get closer, he was increasing the likelihood Green Bay could block the kick.

The Bears’ porous offensive line shouldn’t have given him much faith. Here are the numbers that prove the longer the kick, the greater the chance it could get blocked:

Chicago is now 5-17 in one-score games under Eberflus since he became head coach in 2022. Perhaps his first two seasons could be partially waved away as the Bears were busy tearing down their roster for a rebuild. At the same time, Chicago blew three double-digit leads in the fourth quarter of last season in games they were definitely trying to win. Former QB Justin Fields took the brunt of the blame for those games at the time, but same thing is still happening with Williams back there. It’s obvious Eberflus is the problem.

There is no precedent for an NFL coach who is this bad at the end of close games:

This is the second time this year that Williams has led a potential game-winning drive only for Chicago to lose the game because of poor coaching. The QB engineered what should have been back-to-back touchdown drives on his final two possessions in the cursed Washington game, but one of them was blown when the Bears called a handoff to their backup center on the goal line, who immediately fumbled.

Eberflus might have refused to take accountability in the wake of the Hail Mary, but his refusal to defend the sideline on two earlier plays helped Washington gain extra yards. He could have taken a timeout while Tyrique Stevenson was going viral for an early celebration, but he kept all three in his pocket.

The Packers game is another example of how sloppy Eberflus is at the end of games. He’s overly conservative, and gets so tense that it prevents him from making sensible play calls. The Bears would have beaten the Commanders with better coaching in the fourth quarter. They probably would have beaten the Packers, too, with less cautious playcalling on the final drive.

The Bears should have fired Ebeflus after last season to give Williams a clean slate as he entered the NFL. Instead, Williams will have to learn a new system heading into Year 2 because the Bears need to fire their entire coaching staff again. The mistakes of the failed Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields eras have been repeated.

This all feels too familiar for the Bears, right up to losing a winnable game against the Packers. There’s just never been anything quite like Eberflus’ ability to blow winnable games.