Hairyducked Idiot

I sincerely hope the defense gives up completely and starts giving up quick scores.

I love him as a receiver, but we should probably admit that Cole Kmet is a problem in blocking.

I'm not saying Eberflus doesn't deserve to be fired at this point. But there's so much more to the gap between these two teams than that. Some of it's on Poles. Some of it's on where they are in the success cycle versus us. But it all needs to be addressed. The problems on defense all start with Poles' bizarre sense of positional priorities where he loads up on DBs and off-ball linebackers and then fills in his DL with his annual 2nd-rounder panic trade and some random scraps. I'm more optimistic about the offense entirely because we have Caleb Williams, but it definitely needs some work. Maybe we could have gotten some much-needed depth in the middle rounds instead of Poles' annual bizarre third round project or a mediocre punter in the fourth.

They're making a play here and there but the Lions are just better all over the field.

That is by far the biggest issue with this defense. The front four is simply not good enough. And as I type, we bring the bltiz everyone's been begging for on 3rd down and get smoked for 29.

The challenge thing is legit baffling. An NFL coach getting paid millions and his criteria for throwing challenge flags is how cool it would be if it were overturned, with no regard for whether it's actually going to be overturned.

Does Eberflus even want to win challenges?

It was man and the man got beat. Last week everyone was screaming about zone.

Williams needs 207 passing yards today to pass Justin Fields' career high

It's super plausible that this is it for Eberflus. Even if they don't formally fire him until after the season, the decision probably gets locked in after the absolute dog walking the Lions are going to give the Bears today

Everyone thinks any D that gives up a pass completion is "soft." I haven't gone back and counted the blitzes on the final drive but there were at least several. The final completion to Hockenwhatever down to the 9 came on a blitz and everyone was screaming about that play being a soft defense because Eberflus is too scared to blitz

Daniels' hail Mary was short, making it longer wouldn't have changed anything when your db tips it backwards to a guy behind everyone. Santos has been kicking those trajectories his whole career not getting them blocked consistently. Maybe Eberflus' bad decisions are turning 98% wins into 96% wins so he's still responsible in that way, but it's still incredibly fluky. But again, I know it's impossible to convince people of this because the human brain is simply not wired to accept it. Sooner he gets fired to sooner we can talk about anything else with the Bears

I could go to 31 other NFL fanbases and they'd all say their coaches are terrible at those things. Maaaaaybe not the Chiefs, but Andy Reid used to get those accusations too. Except for the locker room issues, that one is legit

This team would be 6-5 if Tyrique Stephenson executed the basic hail mary defense techniques he was taught in junior high, and if one guy on special teams had executed his block. If those two things had happened, Eberflus would be the exact same coach he is right now at this exact second and we would be 6-5. Nothing about him, his coaching or his playcalls would have changed and we would have a winning record. I know better than to try to convince sports fans that close losses are heavily influenced by random variance. The human brain is simply not wired to accept it, the fundamental attribution bias is too strong. Our evolutionary gift of hyperactive pattern recognition that made us really good at spotting tigers in jungles has the unfortunate side effect of making us really bad at understanding sports. It's no different than every time a baseball team has a big gap in their run differential vs results through 30 or 40 games. Meanwhile, the coaching staff everyone was drooling over in Washington just lost a game when their kicked missed the tying extra points in the closing seconds. I want Eberflus fired at this point because he let the locker room get out of control and because he's had multiple coordinator-level debacles in his staff in a short period. And I definitely want him fired because until he is, Bears discourse will be completely consumed by it because people feel like if they talk about anything else then he might not get fired. But it'll fix everything the same way the last dozen coach firings fixed everything, which is to say it won't fix everything. There's a lot of reasons this bears team is the worst team in the division: - the division is insanely good this year - Caleb Williams is a rookie QB and has frequently played like it - Ryan Poles' weird positional priorities are starting to come home on him. You know what stops Sam Darnold from marching on you in ot? A second starting edge who isn't picked up off the scrap heap while you pile money into linebackers. - an ungodly run of injuries right when we hit the part of the schedule we were hoping to run up some wins with

If you were ever gonna do it, that'd be the time. 3 straight division losses, presumably the Detroit game will be a blowout on national tv, and a long week to get things settled with your interim. I want it to happen just so Bears discourse can move on from the "OMG NOTHING MATTERS UNTIL WE FIRE THIS IDIOTIC COACH" phase.

Williams would need to average 247 passing yards per game for the last 6 games to match the Bears single season record of 3838 held by Erik Kramer. That's a plausible longshot. I'm really rooting for a defensive collapse where we get lots of garbage time for him to put up numbers.

The bears record of 3838 is also still difficult but plausible

Our rookie QB just dropped 340 2/0 on the no. 1 dvoa defense including one of the most clutch 2-minute performances to close a game in soldier field history. He already holds the bears rookie record for passing yards and TDs. With a decent but not spectacular game this week he could pass Fields' career high. And he hasn't thrown an interception in like two months. He's on pace for 3641 17/8 as a rookie. I haven't completely given up on 4k yet. He needs to average 274 per game the rest of the way, which is a longshot but maybe the defense crumbles and we get lots of garbage time

I hope the defense gets destroyed so Williams gets plenty of garbage time

At this point I hope eberflus gets fired just so we can move past "everything is coaching and nothing matters until he's fired" discourse

First, they send blitzes way more often than people think in those situations. And they get burned on them a lot late, because blitzing is a high-risk play. The biggest play allowed against the Packers, the diving catch the guy got a fingertip under, came on a blitz. We had some blitzes late yesterday too. The game against Detroit he was blitzing pretty consistently on the losing drives. Rush four, 7 zone in coverage is still the best defensive play in football. There's a good reason it's the base defense of almost everyone. It's not a "soft" zone, every zone just looks soft when it gets passed completed on it. You aren't going to run very much man against a WR group like the Vikings, they'd destroy you. if you want to win the game in these situations, you need a pass rush that can get there with four. 3+ seconds for darnold to sit there unbothered is just too long. I blame Poles' outside-in approach to defense way more than I do the defensive playcalling. But as always, screw defense, the best way to win that game would have been for the offense to score on their possession. I'm not mad at Williams because he made a rookie mistake taking that sack, but that's how you win long-term in this league

Eberflus blitzes in late game situations way more often than people think he does

The ot sack was just overconfidence in his ability to get away. It's definitely part of his game you have to live with

"This coaching staff has kept the bears out of a playoff hunt this season" is a different argument from "Williams is going to spiral into badness if we keep them and he had a deer in the headlights look in ot"

Lol ok