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Mediocrity is on the menu!
The Chicago Bears are staying the course. The same, mind-numbing, disastrous course.
Head coach Matt Eberflus is staying in his role in 2024, with offensive coordinator Luke Getsy being sacrificed at the altar of his mediocrity. To be fair, Getsy was terrible as well — but the decision to retain Eberflus at the most pivotal time in the Bears’ modern history is the kind of decision that could haunt the decision for the next decade.
With the No. 1 pick in hand, a long-term decision needing to be made on Justin Fields, and the direction of the franchise in flux, it should have been the perfect time to hire a new coaching staff to make these decisions as a unit. Instead general manager Ryan Poles appears petrified of admitting that hiring Eberflus was a mistake, and is willing to risk the future of the organization to satiate his own feelings of inadequacy.
Now Chicago will sit at a dimly-lit booth in a sad diner and quietly munch on their shit sandwich, rather than try to do something to get better.
Under Eberflus the team has limped to a 10-24 record with the same issues rearing their head in each of their two seasons: A woeful offense led by Luke Getsy — which failed to leverage Justin Fields’ potential, paired with an inconsistent defense that showed fleeting flashes of brilliance, couched in mediocrity.
Eberflus has been at the center of it all. Now he’s supposed to find an exciting, dynamic offensive coordinator who can either revitalize Fields, or install a rookie QB, while being a lame duck coach. This is an impossible task, and it’s repeating the same mistakes again.
This is a continuing issue with the Bears: We have no real idea of how good anyone could be on this team, because those in leadership positions keep hamstringing them. Fields is now set to be forced to learn his third offense since entering the NFL, effectively an impossible task, and this will trickle down to the rest of the skill positions. Anyone willing to take the Bears’ offensive coordinator job will need to have a belief that they’re not throwing their career away, which is a dicey proposition when the head coach is as poor as Eberflus is.
Now there are two paths forward, and they both absolutely suck.
Justin Fields remains the starting quarterback. The Bears use the draft to build around him with weapons. The team will need to decide whether to pick up his option, which will have to be done in the first year of him learning a new system. If it falls apart then the Bears have squandered their No. 1 pick, they don’t have a quarterback of the future, and they’ll have to keep waiting to find their guy. Fields would also be working under his third offensive coordinator in four years with Chicago.
The Bears draft a new quarterback. Whether it’s Caleb Williams or Drake Maye, now the Bears are throwing a rookie to a lame duck coach, with a new offensive coordinator. They will need to learn a new offense, as Justin Fields did when Matt Nagy was head coach — only to likely see Eberflus fired in 2025 (because he’s awful), and now the rookie’s development is hampered by needing to learn a new offense is year two.
To make matters worse, we’re not entering a draft where there’s a clear cut No. 1 at quarterback. Caleb Williams and Drake Maye are extremely different players, who require very different coaching philosophies around them. Williams excels out of structure, improvising plays on the fly, and playing with a very aggressive edge where he’s consistently trying to make big plays downfield.
Meanwhile, Drake Maye is much more a typical pocket passer. He likes to grip it and rip it, working best with a clear structure around him and clearly defines goals.
If you’re to extend this to the current NFL it’s about whether you have a plus-level Kyler Murray (Williams), or a minus-level Justin Herbert (Maye) — and those are really different players to build an offense around. It’s a decision that has to be made with a new head coach, with a cohesive vision, with an offensive coordinator they can rely on to make that decision.
Instead, the choice will be made by Poles, for his lame duck coach, and lame duck offensive coordinator.
All signs point to Fields remaining at quarterback. This all reeks of staying pat. There’s no amount of help that can save this team. Sure, they could trade back and get some draft assets while selecting someone like Marvin Harrison Jr. They could bolster their offensive line as well. None of that changes that the guy in charge is a bad head coach, with poor decision making, and no amount of draft picks will change that.
The Bears decided that ketchup was spicy. Now they’ll settle for mediocrity.
