Don't just do nothing, stand there

The Bears have to do the thing they've never done before

Don't just do nothing, stand there

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The obvious result of yesterday’s pants shitting in Detroit (the second in two years for the Bears) has to be the firing of Matt Eberflus. On the surface it would be because they are 4-8 and going nowhere, but that’s just the surface. If their head coach wasn’t cluelessly driving them off the road at the end of close games they could very well be 8-4.

The Hail Mary loss against the Commanders. The blocked field goal loss to the Packers with a raft of questionable decisions on the last two drives. The overtime loss to the Vikings when they gave away ten points because they couldn’t figure out how to fix their leaky field goal blocking from the week before and couldn’t get their punt returner to run away from a bouncing ball he had no intention to return. And yesterday when poor clock management doomed their final drive and it ended in spectacular failure.

The Bears have never fired a coach during a season, and they’ve had guys who absolutely deserved it. But their reticence to do it is not due to them being too cheap to pay two head coaches in the same season. Maybe it used to be. Who am I kidding? Of course it used to be.

The Bears used to be a really cheap franchise. George Halas was cheap. He handed that shit down. But there was a reason for it. The Bears didn’t used to have a lot of money. There was a time when the death of Virginia McCaskey would absolutely have resulted in the grandkids forcing a sale of the franchise. The only way for those grandkids to ever get their hands on some real money was via a sale. But money hasn’t been an issue for a long time. Once the NFL started signing huge TV rights deals every franchise started getting a shitload of money. So no, there’s no way the grandkids want to sell anymore. Besides, Vags seems to be incapable of death.

Anyway, back to why they won’t fire a coach in season. Because it’s become one of their sad little traditions. It’s a badge of honor for George and the other idiots. So up to this point, no matter how inept (Wanny), checked out (John Fox), loathed by his own team (Marc Trestman) or clueless (Matt Nagy) a coach was, the Bears were going to let him finish the season because…that’s what they’ve always done.

This time at least feels different. It’s somehow even worse than any of that. The Flus has managed to combine Wanny’s ineptness, Nagy’s cluelessness and while he’s not loathed by his own team, but they have no faith in him. And how could they?

What has he done in the last six weeks that would lead you to believe he knows what he’s doing? Four gut-wrenching losses to good teams, and two uninspired losses to lousy teams.

The end of this game was the worst I’ve ever seen. Mike Donohue and I might need a redo on our ten worst losses since 1980 Remember This Crap. And we only recorded it nine days ago!

But the entire first half was also a shitshow.

The Bears didn’t get their first first down until there were 55 seconds left in the half. They got two total in the first half, and the other one was as the result of a Lions penalty.

The defense kept rallying to hold the Lions to field goals, but Detroit was leisurely moving the ball up and down the field at will.

The lethargic Bears look like they ate their turkey before the game.

So other than not having them ready to play and then not knowing what to do at the end, everything went fine.

And speaking of the end of the game, one thing that hasn’t been pointed out enough is that the Bears did use two of their three timeouts on the final drive, in the least strategic manner possible.

The first timeout came with 3:14 to go when facing a third and seven, the Bears weren’t going to get a play off in time.

The second came with :43 left after an incomplete pass, because the Bears weren’t going to get a play off in time.

This needs to be reiterated. The Bears called timeout with :43 seconds left in a game they were trailing by three points, WITH THE CLOCK ALREADY STOPPED!

That is the start of the sequence of mind numbing shit.

Timeout.
Pass from Caleb Williams to Keenan Allen for 12 yards to the Lions 13, nullified by illegal hands to the face by Teven Jenkins.
Williams “sacked” for loss of six with :36 to go. (It was an ill-advised QB draw that blew up when Larry Borom decided not to block anybody.)
Incomplete pass to Rome Odunze with :00 left.

That’s it. That’s all they got out of that.

Oh, and I don’t want to miss giving credit to tight end/long snapper/podcaster Cole Kmet for nullifying a pass to the Lions 21 yard line with 1:04 left in the game because of his SECOND OFFENSIVE PASS INTERFERENCE PENALTY OF THE GAME!

I see some dopes trying to blame Caleb for not getting a play off sooner. First, The Flus can call timeout whenever he wants. He’s got the side judge standing right next to him. It would be instantaneous. He never did it.

Caleb could be seen trying to get everybody to hurry up and, as per usual, the Bears were in full mass confusion mode and as his coach was standing on the sidelines soiling himself and the Bears passed the point of no return, Caleb audibled to a deeper route where at least there’d be some kind of chance for Rome to end up in the end zone.

With a better coach, Caleb would have quite the reputation already for late game heroics. He led two would be game winning drives in DC, he was incredible on the final drive against the Packers, he made a series of clutch plays on the final two drives of the fourth quarter against the Vikings and he was balls in the second half against Detroit. And after getting the Bears in position to win all of those games, they ended up losing them all.

Even if firing The Flus is simply Kevin Warren and Ryan Poles pretending to do something, at this point I’ll take it. I’m not above being pandered to.

Just do something.