Chicago Bears head coach Matt Eberflus was the joke of the national media on Monday morning for his late-game decision-making on Sunday. The Bears fell to 4-3 on the season after Washington Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels laughed a game-winning Hail Mary on the game’s final play to escape Northwest Stadium with an 18-15 win.
Eberflus was grilled by ESPN’s “Get Up” crew on Monday morning for playing his defensive backs at the Chicago 30-yard line on the second-to-last play of the game. A 13-yard completion to wide receiver Terry McLaurin set up the Commanders in range for the Hail Mary from the Washington 48-yard line. McLaurin ran an out route that was purposely undefended by Chicago.
Matt Eberflus: End of game situational moment doesn’t matter
Eberflus defended his decision not to defend the underneath route by saying the penultimate play didn’t “really matter” because the game would have come down to a final play anyway. (The Bears’ third-year head coach didn’t factor in that a tackle in bounds on that playing question could have ended the game.)
Chicago Bears safety Kevin Byard disagreed with Eberflus
Per ESPN’s Courtney Cronin, safety Kevin Byard had a “discussion” with Eberflus about the play that his head coach and defacto defensive coordinator said didn’t really matter. Byard didn’t agree with Eberflus’ Philosophy.
“[Eberflus] has his feelings about it,” Byard said. “I think it’s a lot of different ways you can defend those plays. Me personally, I think that in that scenario possibly could have had the corners pressed up there because they just ran two out cuts and the play was called just to get a couple more yards to throw it down the field.
“If you had the guys pressed up, maybe they convert to verticals and they actually run the Hail Mary but even if they do that and our corners run with those guys, I’m not saying that he [Jayden Daniels] doesn’t have the arm strength, but you think about the ball landing maybe 10 yards shorter and it may be a little different. I’m not saying that, we don’t know, looking back at it it’s always woulda, coulda, shoulda. But at the end of the day, things happened the way they happened. Could we have sent pressure? Maybe. He made the call and that’s what it was.”
Kevin Byard said he had a discussion with Matt Eberflus about how the Bears defended the play before the Hail Mary when Terry McLaurin got to the sideline for a 13-yard gain and stopped the clock with 2 seconds to set up the final play.
How might that play have been defended…
— Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) October 28, 2024
The resulting loss hurts the Bears chances of making the playoffs
What it was turned out to be a loss that could bite the team in the butt come January. The Bears had a chance to earn a tie-breaker over an NFC East team that looks like it will make the playoffs as a wild card team or divisional champion. Instead, the Bears have the eighth-best record in the NFC entering Week 9.
Eberflus’ decision and Byard’s clarification make it really kind of hard to harp on cornerback Tyrique Stevenson for loafing on the Hail Mary on the next play when he has a head coach who has no strategy behind his previous play call in a situational drive because the moment “doesn’t really matter.”
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