The Bears find themselves in the same old mess as they try to move forward from former coach Matt Eberflus

Bears president Kevin Warren and general manager Ryan Poles have talked a lot about pulling the team out of the clumsiness and incompetence that has characterized much of its recent history, but the last few days have felt a little like the same old Bears on.

It’s a crucial time for Warren and the Poles to prove they’re running a serious operation given the chaotic firing of former coach Matt Eberflus, who spoke to reporters on a Zoom call on Friday only to be fired shortly after , and his entire term in office is evidence of the opposite.

The Bears’ job would probably be the most coveted top candidate opportunity in January – if the Bears didn’t exist. That’s an image that Warren and Poles need to repair as much as possible, and it becomes problematic when aspiring coaches perceive them as dysfunctional.

The Bears were right to fire Eberflus, but they still made a mistake. Despite their deliberate approach, Warren, Poles and Chairman George McCaskey waited until Friday morning to discuss Eberflus. They paid no attention to his press conference scheduled for 9 a.m., which should have been postponed to avoid the embarrassing scene that ensued.

Eberflus, who wasn’t sure what was going on elsewhere in his building when he logged onto Zoom, looked back at and talked about the loss to the Lions in which he misjudged the time and cost them the game upcoming game against the 49ers, which he ultimately couldn’t watch, won’t be there.

Then he opened the room to questions, and then the bears looked really bad and unnecessarily subjected Eberflus to further humiliation. The first three were all some version of “Have you been fired yet?”

He didn’t give clear answers because he couldn’t. It was the worst – and cruelest – time for the Bears to put him live in front of the microphone. Some in the organization regretted it, a source said, but there was no way to undo the mistake.

The Bears chose not to reject Eberflus’ call, in part to avoid raising alarm bells when the decision was still pending. But timetable changes are not that unusual and it would have been easy to find a reason for it.

The alarm went off anyway. As the call approached and reporters hadn’t received a Zoom link, which is typically sent out well in advance, they posted about the oddity on social media. Two minutes after the planned start the time had finally come.

More determination from Poles and Warren could have prevented the fiasco altogether. Eberflus’ mistake in the Lions game was not his first. He made serious errors in each of the six straight losses to end his tenure, dropping his career record to 14-32, the third-worst in the more than century-long history of Bears coaching. And it’s been a long time since he would come back before Thanksgiving in 2025, a source said.

A key question for Poles and Warren, who were not scheduled to speak to the media on Sunday, would be why it took so long – both after the Lions’ loss and overall.

It would have been sensible to fire Eberflus after the 19-3 home loss to the league’s then-worst Patriots on November 10th.

At that point, the Bears were still hoping for a turnaround and hadn’t ruled out Eberflus coming out of his tailspin, a source said. Instead, he blew the final game against the Packers the following week and then followed up with a stunning fumble on a critical fourth down against the Vikings before wasting his chance against the Lions.

Had the Bears gone to interim coach Thomas Brown — or anyone more capable than Eberflus — before these debacles, they might have had different results. If even two of those three losses resulted in wins, they would be 6-6 and still within reach of a playoff spot.

Poles could have made the move a week earlier if he had foreseen difficulties. After Eberflus mishandled the final game against the Commanders and the unnecessary week-long circus involving cornerback Tyrique Stevenson, who apparently had so little respect for Eberflus’ authority that he walked out of practice when told he wouldn’t start the next game, The Bears were listless in a 29-9 loss to the Cardinals.

By the way, player complaints began in September. There were so many warning signs that Poles and Warren either missed or brushed aside.

Going back even further, there was a valid argument for firing Eberflus after last season and going with an offensive-minded coach like Ben Johnson or Kliff Kingsbury to team up with rookie quarterback Caleb Williams.

Poland confirmed this in an August interview with the Sun Times that firing Eberflus would have been “popular” at the time, but believed he would have seen sufficient progress in the second half of 2023, when the Bears’ defense improved and they went 5-3 in their final eight games.

The asterisk says four of those wins came against sub-.500 teams and two of the losses came on stunning fourth-quarter slumps.

In the end, the Bears are once again stuck in a mess of their own making. There are new people in charge, but the result looks the same. So who will fix it?

Warren said when he took office he didn’t need to call someone like Bill Polian to tell him what to do, as McCaskey and Ted Phillips demanded in 2021. Poles had said he was tired of talking about, and probably repeating, the Bears story . McCaskey said he would retire once Warren arrives, but he’s clearly still involved, having been part of the meeting that decided what to do with Eberflus and with former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron three weeks ago.

Who is really in charge and what is their plan? The Bears need a clear and compelling answer to that question because it’s the first one any coaching candidate will ask.