Bears general manager Ryan Poles got it wrong on coach Matt Eberflus — multiple times — and appeared to still be reeling from it as he sat next to his boss Monday.
While team president and CEO Kevin Warren proclaimed the rebound period after Eberflus’ firing to be a momentous occasion, Poles was listening to Warren hammer the biggest hire of his career.
“We just came up short too many times, and we had to make a change,” Poles conceded.
He whiffed three times on Eberflus. Perhaps he deserves grace for the first miss, which was hiring Eberflus in January 2022. The Bears started interviewing candidates weeks before they hired Poles and appeared to have already selected finalists without him. Poles said he had freedom to restart the whole process and chose Eberflus independently, but there was at least indirect influence from chairman George McCaskey’s five-man committee as Poles hired Eberflus two days after he landed his own job.
The bigger misjudgment was keeping Eber–flus after last season. Poles drew too much optimism from an uptick on defense and a 5-3 record in the second half and didn’t realize the Bears’ epic collapses in 2023 were an omen of more to come. In his quest to get everything right in onboarding No. 1 pick Caleb Williams, a quarterback he believed would be a franchise-changer, he missed terribly in retaining Eberflus and hiring offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, whose selection he was heavily involved in. Waldron was fired after nine games. Poles gave little explanation for the error Monday.
Strike three came when the Bears canned Waldron after the loss the Patriots on Nov. 10. Eberflus should have been gone then, too. He was 14-29 then, had multiple flubs on the field and at the podium, had seen three coordinators exit and was spiraling in the wake of miscues at the end of the Commanders game on Oct. 27. Plus, players had been voicing complaints about the coaching since September.
The Bears were 4-5 at that point. The season could have been saved.
They lost three more games, and now it’s cooked.
“It’s hard to go back and figure out if every-thing would’ve been different,” Poles said of firing Eberflus earlier. “There’s times where you’ve got to see what the issues are . . . and [are they] repetitive enough to make a move at that time? We started going down this recent path where things started getting a little bit more repetitive, and that’s when we got together and had that conversation.”
But anyone could’ve taken that approach. It’s a general manager’s job to see trouble coming and avoid it. Poles absolutely had enough data points after two-plus seasons.
He was in Detroit when the consequences of his inaction materialized, first on the field as Eberflus botched the clock and cost the Bears a chance to at least force overtime, then in the locker room, where players’ backlash toward Eberflus — bubbling for weeks — erupted to the point of no return.
Poles’ overarching responsibility now is to see the future more clearly. Although Warren has marked Poles’ job safe this offseason, there’s no guarantee beyond that. They’ll lead the search together, but Warren was clear to put the onus on Poles to make the final call.
If Poles gets it wrong on the next coach, they’re probably leaving together. And that creates another hurdle he and Warren must navigate: coaching candidates who may be cautious about stepping into the possible instability of mismatched timelines.
“We’re open to talk through that,” Poles said. “That shouldn’t be an issue at all.”
It won’t be that simple. Coveted candidates have options, and they’ll be eager to know exactly how shaky the Bears’ situation is.
The higher someone moves up the ladder, the more responsibility he encounters. Eberflus demonstrated that the job was too much for him. Poles is facing his last shot to show that’s not also true of him.
On Tuesday, Johnson wasn’t ready to say the Bears’ mistakes — from the ‘‘Fail Mary’’ against the Commanders to a blocked field goal against the Packers to the loss to the Lions — automatically would improve because they have a new man in charge for the next five games.
Rodgers essentially said the incoming coach should be selected based predominantly on what works for Williams.
It’s not the craziest idea, and the Broncos traded for Sean Payton just last year.
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