BLOWING A KILLER TIMEOUT MEANS EBB-ER-FLUS — JIM NANTZ SAID SO — WASTES WILLIAMS
On a holiday when the quarterback admirably threw three second-half touchdown passes, Matt Eberflus messed up the Bears with last-minute brainlock, the latest example of why he should be fired today
The seat on the flight home should have been empty. Matt Eberflus — described as “EBB-er-flus” by Jim Nantz — didn’t deserve a chair. He should be dismissed today, only because Thursday was Thanksgiving. He cannot carry on as head coach of the Bears, when he had one timeout remaining with 32 seconds left in a game he could have won.
Instead, he never called it. Did he have brainlock? Should he never have been hired by the general manager, Ryan Poles? Is he the biggest dope in a history of Chicago sports dopes? Caleb Williams was brilliant in the second half, with three touchdown passes, and he was sacked at Detroit’s 41-yard line. There was time to recover — on third down with 26 yards to go, losing 23-20 — and Cairo Santos was warming up on the sideline. Sadly, because Eberflus and Poles never found a better placekicker, there was no assurance he would make a field goal from 58 yards.
So, the head coach should have called his timeout. Or Williams quickly would rally teammates and find one more receiver to help Santos from a shorter distance. Give a rallying team a chance, right? Call the damned timeout, EBB-er-flus. Would Caleb throw a winning touchdown and finish a 99-yard drive that turned the Lions into turkeys? Would Santos make a kick and force overtime? Eberflus did not do anything but stare into the blankness of Ford Field.
Would you like another shredded heartstring? Another sickly feeling on the holiday? There it was, with Williams madly rushing people into place and calling the final play with six seconds left after Eberflus should have called timeout. The pass was incomplete. A team that began a six-game losing streak with rancid overtones, with a Hail Mary turning to hell, lost while one CBS commentator said the mess “was unacceptable from the head coach position” and another said it’s a monumental screwup that leads to a firing.
“I think we handled it the right way,” said Eberflus, always claiming he’s right when everything he does is wrong.
And when does he expect to lose his job with a 14-32 record?
“This is the NFL. I know where it is,” Eberflus said. “I’m just going to put my best foot forward and keep grinding. … I’m going to keep grinding and working. That’s what I do.”
Want to explain more? “We’re at 36 seconds right there (after the sack). Our hope was that we’d re-rack that play at 18 seconds, throw it inbounds, get it into field goal range and then call the timeout. That’s where it was and that was our decision-making process on that,” he said. “We were outside of field goal range and needed to get a few more yards in there as close as we can get and then we were going to call timeout and that’s why we held that last timeout at the end of the game. Disappointed for the players. They put a lot of work in on a short week and put themselves in position to win that game.”
What he does is lose and lose when his team is capable of winning and winning. Look at Williams, who was headed toward another honor. It was the Madden Thanksgiving MVP award, given to the finest player in each of the holiday games. He should have won, the way he cradled the Heisman Trophy, the way he quieted nutty fans who dream of a Super Bowl but still live in Detroit.
But the Bears can’t finish games, failing disgustingly in Washington and thoughtlessly at Ford Field. The shame is that they returned from a non-existent first half against a team favored to reach its first Super Bowl, which might send Eminem into a party-hardy zone at a Coney Island stand. Williams controlled the second half, more than any of the enemy’s stars. He never has toe-danced with ballet slippers, but be aware, his happy feet prevented him from another hospital visit. He paints his fingernails, which by now must be cracked and brittle. At least his brains and bones are intact, for now.
On Eberflus’ muff, Williams said: “I don’t have a microphone to speak to coach or anything like that. There wasn’t any huge communication. In that situation you get a call at that time, you got to try and get the guys back, get everyone lined up so you can go run a play. We got lined up, got the play and I made an adjustment because I saw the clock running down knowing that if we complete a ball inbounds or anything like that, we won’t have time to kick a field goal. I made an adjustment and knew Rome (Odunze) was either going to be one-on-one or he was going to beat the safety and be one-on-one there and try to give him a shot. We got the shot and missed.”
DJ Moore, as always, put it better. He was clueless about why the timeout was blown. “We got to find a way to win. We keep coming back in these games and we have time to actually win the game and we just s–t the bed,” he said.
Again, Williams showed the quarterback-malnourished fans of Chicago what it’s like to have an authentic slinger. Sometime soon, before a 4-8 season ends with Hard Knocks turning to battered souls, the Bears might like to have Ben Johnson as their next head coach. He clutches a red pen. He chews the top as the offensive coordinator of the Lions. As he watched the helpless opponents, the Bears, he must wonder what halfwit wants to coach them when the inevitable vacancy opens soon. It sure won’t be him. His representatives already have said he’ll be very selective, that he’s something of an introvert as a film-room virtuoso, that he isn’t apt to be a head coach in a big market.
Chicago is a big market. And it is stuck with an offense that barely showed up in an early one-sided trouncing that left Williams staring at his sideline tablet, unable to complete a pass before America switched the channel. All you need to know: Nantz, who has covered holiday games for decades, referred to Eberflus with the wrong last name before correcting himself in the booth. Now that Mike Ditka has returned in a condo, it’s tempting to ask if he would coach one game from a phone.
Please.
At one point, the first-half clinic was so proficient that we waited for more gadget plays from Johnson. How about the reverse handoff to the 335-pound left tackle, Penei Sewell, who wanted to throw the football and was sacked? Next time, Johnson can attempt a hook-and-ladder play to Sewell, who catches balls when necessary. This is the beauty of the Lions, who are 11-1.
For Williams, he must wonder why the April draft exists and why he’s fastened to this franchise for at least three more seasons. He was sacked five times and eluded 20 more. Where was the stretcher? This weekend, he’ll return to Los Angeles and lead USC onto the field against Notre Dame. Never mind looking at the gruesome numbers in the first half, when the Lions controlled the ball for 22:54, rushed for 144 yards and passed for 135 yards while gaining 18 first downs.
Yet, in the end, Williams deserved a Turducken. The Bears should be coached by someone with nothing else better to do. Johnson will go far as the right-hand man of Dan Campbell, joining the Lions as a quality control coach in 2019 before leading Jared Goff to stardom as he throws the ball to Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams and Sam LaPorta and waits for large gains from David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs, known as “Sonic and Knuckles” from a video game.
Johnson grew up in North Carolina and played at quarterback for the Tar Heels. He coached tight ends at Boston College. He was an assistant on the Miami Dolphins staff before joining Campbell. “I think Ben's a rock star, man,” Campbell said. “He's a young guy, but he's kind of gone a little longer, harder road to get to where he's at. He's been around some really good coaches, now, some guys who have coached some pretty good quarterbacks.” He has a wife have three children.
They may stay in Detroit? Why not? The red pen blurs other teams.
Look elsewhere, Ryan Poles and Kevin Warren, for someone to replace Matt EBB-er-flus.
Fire him today.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.