One thing about Matt Eberflus is that he’s an even-keel guy. He never gets too high or too low. That is a good trait to have in such a rollercoaster business like the NFL. No doubt he wasn’t feeling great after what he saw yesterday with the Chicago Bears falling 38-20 to the Green Bay Packers. It was another miserable effort from the offense that saw them score six first half points. Defensively, they weren’t much better. While the run defense was solid, their pass rush managed only one sack and six pressures all day. Yet none of that was what haunted Eberflus the most.
It was the mental mistakes. He knows the fastest way to lose games is when you beat yourself. One of the things Eberflus has harped on every single day since he took over was being smart. That meant avoiding costly mistakes like penalties. Chicago didn’t do that on Sunday, committing seven penalties for 61 yards. It was the first thing the head coach mentioned in his interview on Kap & J-Hood for ESPN 1000.
“In terms of yesterday, as I said postgame, was the penalties put us behind. We got some negative plays on 1st down, which also put us behind the sticks, which led to our 3rd down percentage that couldn’t create favorable 3rd downs for us. So we’ve got to do a better job at that.”
The Bears converted only three of their 13 attempts on 3rd down. That was the story of the game. They faced 3rd and 7 or longer eight times. Eberflus harped on it again later in the interview. He was clearly upset about it.
“Yeah, it’s not great. It is discipline. It’s gonna get addressed. It’ll be addressed here at 10:00 this morning. We have to get it corrected.”
Matt Eberflus has a lot of work to do.
The fact is his team wasn’t ready to play. They came into the game a little too sure of themselves. Green Bay pounced on every mistake and won handily. Eberflus has now lost 11 straight games dating back to last year. Coaches don’t last long in the NFL with marks like that on their record. The Bears want to focus on the long term. They want to build this the right way. That isn’t a bad idea. However, it has to come with some signs of improvement year by year. This is not the start anybody expected.
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There are 16 games to go. Matt Eberflus has shown in the past that he can make adjustments and get his players to execute better. We should expect the same going into Tampa Bay against the Buccaneers. Once the Bears stop beating themselves so often, they should start creating more positive plays. Eberflus understands this. It’s a young team. They have a lot of learning still to do. A loss like this can sometimes wake guys up to reality. Maybe now they’ll start listening to their head coach.
