New Bears coach Thomas Brown preached accountability for a team that needed it — then he went one step further.

It was an easy start for Thomas Brown as the interim head coach of the Chicago Bears.

It was easy for Brown to speak of the pillar’s importance and then demonstrate it at a later date.

It was his first press conference as interim head coach, less than a month after he was promoted to offensive coordinator in the wake of the firing of Shane Waldron.

But Brown said he wants his team to embody three “strengths: coachability, accountability and reliability.

“It’s all of us, myself included,” he said Monday afternoon. “I am not above coaching. I am not above accountability. We get it done together.”

Then, he showed it.

Unprepared, before he opened the floor to questions, Brown brought up the team’s recent game-ending loss. The Bears lost to the Washington Commanders in late October at a poorly defended Hail Mary. Blocked kicks, overtime sputtering and a mismanaged clock have seen them lose their last three games by seven points.

Matt Eberflus was an easy scapegoat after he was fired Friday. Brown didn’t stop the accountability there.

“I know there’s been a lot of scrutiny, discussion, dialogue about what happened at the end of some of these games,” Brown said Monday. “I am not absolved of responsibility for these actions.

“The word ‘team’ – I believe in doing things together. We are rewarded together, we are criticized together. So we will have an internal process that we will go through on a weekly basis to prepare ourselves for those opportunities. And on game days, we will execute.

“Don’t panic, do a great job of communicating, be ready in the moment, make a decision and roll with it.”

On Thanksgiving, the Bears rallied from a 16-0 halftime deficit to outscore their division-rival Detroit Lions 20-7 in the second half. They then got the ball back on their own 1-yard line with 3:31 to play.

Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams found receiver DJ Moore for 25 yards on third-and-7 and 21 yards on fourth-and-4. Williams scrambled for 14 yards on one sack and 13 yards on another. In all, the Bears moved 52 yards. But after a sack with 31 seconds to play, the Bears didn’t call a timeout. Williams tried to rush his team as there were 4 yards between them and their expected field-goal range. Instead, a missed pass to Rom Odunze expired the clock. The Bears lost 23-20.

No field goal was attempted.

Why?

Brown addressed the gaffe publicly and to his players.

“Like I said this morning on offense: There’s a lot of dialogue about those last couple games, the last seconds,” Brown said. “I focus more on the events leading up to it – the opportunities to finish the game before that moment, to finish the game.

“So yes, it’s important for us to execute in those moments. But don’t forget we had several chances throughout the game. We dug ourselves into a hole in the first half, fought back in that game… [and] There were several opportunities to implement it earlier.”

Brown modeled for his players what it means to deal with mistakes. He could have leaned on his earlier line that “nobody cares about what happened before,” but a coach who preaches “it’s not about the event — it’s about the reaction” instead refuses to throw Eberflus under the bus and acknowledges both his reactions. told own role

“I’m not going to get into the weeds of what was communicated, not communicated, because it’s irrelevant, it’s over now,” Brown said. “But there were definitely learning opportunities from it.

“And I don’t absolve myself of responsibility in that situation.”