Matt Eberflus’ postgame message to “stick together” after the Chicago Bears’ Thanksgiving Day loss to the Detroit Lions reportedly didn’t go down well with team members.
A confusing final 32 seconds of the game that saw the Bears fail to use their final timeout as they went on a 23-20 drive to set up a game-tying field goal just didn’t go down well with the front office — Eberfluss was fired Friday — he had some of his The player also lost.
According to Adam Johns and Diana Russini of The Athletics, cornerback Jaylon Johnson, a team captain, was “emotional and angry” about the end of the game and directed his anger at Eberflus.
Johnson wasn’t the only distraught Bear. Multiple players and staff members wondered why a timeout was not called. This clearly wasn’t another loss for a 4-8 team.
“The guys were furious,” said one staff member. “It was a save this season.”
“The locker room was ugly,” another staffer said. “There was a lot of screaming.”
The first player said: “As players we felt that there were many instances where we fought our way back into the game only to lose due to poor time management and decision making.”
Eberflus reportedly left the locker room after his speech and talking to the players.
On Friday, as Bears brass discussed their next steps, Eberflus held his regularly scheduled video conference with reporters. After a while, he quit the job.
Why was Eberflus allowed to answer questions shortly before he was fired? Team owner George McCaskey, president and CEO Kevin Warren and general manager Ryan Pols did not decide on the move until after their meeting, and the feeling was that if Iberfluss’ media session was canceled or postponed, alarm bells would ring that the decision had been made. made up
The Bears had never fired a head coach in a season until Friday. Eberflus gave them plenty of reasons to head into the Thanksgiving disaster. His time ran out when the locker room left.
