The Bears have moved on from Eberflus, but does it really matter who the next coach is?
The assumption is always that the next coach will be better than the last one, otherwise why bother? In the case of the Bears, truth is a cruel recap, the line of fools stretching back beyond the last couple of Matts, through a Dave here and a Dick there, like nesting dolls made of tissue, one-ply inevitably.
If the preceding seems a convoluted and mixed image, ah, blame the Bears, who bring out the muddled misery among those who wish them nothing but well, who have faith that they will get it right this time, knowing all the while that they won’t.
Say this for Matt Eberflus, he took the blame and the Bears — meaning Ryan Poles, Kevin Warren and one McCaskey heir or another — were happy to agree with him, leaving the rest of the season to the unfamiliar Thomas Brown, a man with a resume, just a guess.
Brown was a running back, more than less, a vagabond assistant and interim this or that. His bond with Caleb Williams is apparently his chief endorsement, a connection not transferable to Brown’s next stop.
Williams has played competently, while still losing, bizarrely but factually, since Brown became the offensive coordinator three games ago. Upon such meager achievement is Brown deemed worthy of the head job.
In fact, from being a new hire, to a position coach, to a coordinator, to a successor, Brown has risen faster than a water blister.
That would seem to be the job, making Williams into all that he can be, when after 12 games enough evidence is there to see what he is. Williams is unfinished with flashes of flair but hardly “generational” as advertised, unless the generation is disposable.
Winning is almost incidental to proving that the Bears were not wrong about Williams, making him the choice of choices, the franchise savior as was Justin Fields before him, as was Jay Cutler once upon a trade.
Every little success by Williams is offered as evidence that Williams will be great when, taken altogether, as these things are, Williams is just another maybe.
If Williams fails, so do those responsible for him, namely Poles, who now steps to the head of the fault line. Giving Brown the task of proving him right, Poles is hedging against being wrong.
It matters not from here, whether Brown is auditioning or substituting because the important thing is the Bears have shown that they won’t stand for being who they are, clueless, incompetent and monotonous.
After being so publicly shamed on Thanksgiving in Detroit by simply not being able to tell time, the laughter was too much to bear (no pun intended) by those now concerned about their own jobs, so something had to be done.
Rather than blame the rookie quarterback, whose fault it was, the Bears blamed the coach as they should have done last season. But no one was watching when Eberflus was no better coach losing then than he is losing now.
Stated Poles, he made the “decision to move in a different direction.” This was deemed necessary without defining all the directions possible, when sideways would seem to be the most likely and entirely acceptable.
Firing Eberflus was all show and unnecessary, a transparent public relations stunt, wrapped in import. The Bears had never fired a coach during the season. This is how serious they were taking six straight losses and televised befuddlement.
In the programmed words of Warren, “Our organizational and operational structure is strong, focused, aligned and energized for the future.”
Don’t you just love it when a stuffed suit talks football?
Let’s break that down, an echo of the old Jerry Krause assertion that organizations win championships, or to put it in a popular film excerpt, “Coaches? We don’t need no stinkin’ coaches.”
Whoever the next coach is he will be entirely inconsequential, a game plan maker and a whistle wearer, but little more, no one to detract from the real business of the Bears, feeding Poles’ ego, getting a new stadium and funding the McCaskeys.
Enough is enough and more of the same is expected.