Column: Picture perfect? Chicago Bears coach Matt Eberflus has confidence in his vision, but faces a treacherous climb.
A little before 11 a.m. Monday, a horde of NFL head coaches paraded to an ornate fountain near the front circle at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla. It’s tradition at the NFL owners meetings for as many coaches as possible to assemble for a group portrait, a snapshot that can later serve as a time capsule.
Chicago Bears coach Matt Eberflus made that walk for the first time this week. And as he settled into his spot on the third step of the fountain, to the left of Brian Daboll and behind Kyle Shanahan, Eberflus glanced around.
It was another new experience in his professional life.
“Pretty cool,” Eberflus said the following morning. “You look around and you see all the coaches who have been in the league a long time. Andy Reid and (John) Harbaugh. Pete Carroll. You see those guys there and it’s pretty cool.”
As streams of water shot from the fountain behind him, Eberflus raised his shoulders and smiled for the cameras.
“I was amazed by how fast it was,” he said. “Just ‘Hey, line up.’ Click. Click. Click. Click. ‘OK, we’ll see you later.’”
Fitting perhaps. In the NFL, that’s often a common dynamic.
Eberflus was reminded Tuesday that guys like Reid and Harbaugh, Carroll and Mike Tomlin are outliers, regulars in a group photo that seems to change as rapidly as a highway marquee.
Because of COVID-19, the last time the NFL held its owners meetings in person was March 2019. The group photo that spring was taken in a courtyard at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, with Camelback Mountain rising in the background. Twenty-six of the league’s 32 coaches gathered. Three years later, 16 of those coaches had been fired. Add two other coaches who couldn’t make it to that 2019 photo and are no longer in the jobs they held then.
Framed another way, of the 28 coaches who said cheese at The Breakers on Monday morning — Bill Belichick, Mike McCarthy, Bruce Arians and Dan Campbell were absent — 16 were either posing for that fraternity portrait for the first time or, in the cases of Lovie Smith, Ron Rivera and Doug Pederson, doing so for a new team.
This is all a long way of emphasizing that Eberflus should savor his moments as Bears coach. Because there’s no telling how long this may last. His official introduction at Halas Hall came eight weeks ago. Which means his clock is already ticking loudly. Suddenly, it’s as if Eberflus is Jack Bauer in “24″ with a mission to save the Bears from another prolonged stretch of mediocrity that could detonate another front office and coaching staff.
Can he chase down a championship before his time runs out?
Sure, all this may sound somewhat dramatic. But that’s the NFL, where the hourglass for many coaches come with a throat the size of a Super Big Gulp for the sands to pour through.
From January 2012 — when the Bears replaced Smith with Marc Trestman — until the 2018 offseason, 49 head coaches were hired across the league. Thirty-four of those leaders didn’t make it to a fifth season. Painfully for Chicagoans, that includes the Bears’ past three coaches. Trestman was gone after two seasons. John Fox only made it through three. Matt Nagy was shown the door three months ago after a four-year run and three years after he smiled in that Arizona Biltmore photo as the league’s Coach of the Year.
Through that lens, Eberflus faces long odds to coach deep into the 2020s. But as he heads toward his first season in Chicago, he is proceeding with a sturdy self-confidence plus an awareness of the colossal challenges.
“I just think you draw on your experiences,” he said. “I feel good about the (coaching) staff we’ve put together. I feel good about those guys as men and as teachers. Now it’s about the development of the players and how are we going to come together in building the relationships? … It’s a partnership between the coaches and the players. So how are we going to bring that together? That’s what’s special about coaching. And that’s why you coach.”
Next week, as a window opens for the Bears to begin their offseason workout program at Halas Hall, Eberflus will have his first opportunity to gather his team. He was asked if he has given thought to how he wants that first address to go.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready to go. Been ready for three weeks.”
In a nutshell, Eberflus wants his team to first understand how he operates and what he values most. Naturally, he will stress the need for hustle and intensity. He’ll ask for full effort at all times. But he’ll also begin schooling players on how meetings will operate and how practices should go. He hopes to set expectations and standards, and use the spring and early summer to get his entire program up and running.
“When you have nine weeks with a group and you want to lay the foundation, you have to take it one piece at a time,” Eberflus said. “And just lay that down. Because when you physically lay a foundation, you have to prepare the ground. The ground has to be right. And we’re going to take our time to do it.”
That’s been a theme for Eberflus and new Bears general manager Ryan Poles. They have talked since late January about taking their time, about avoiding the temptation to take foolish or reckless shortcuts. Both men again stressed the need for patience this week. From themselves. From each other. From a hungry Bears fan base that wants to experience high-level success yesterday.
But with a grounded and realistic sense of the state of the franchise, Poles and Eberflus also know exactly where things stand and how everything needs to be done. As tedious as some of the baby-steps might be.
“We’re trying to do this the right way,” Poles said, “and that takes patience.”
If it means trading an established veteran standout like Khalil Mack who could contribute right now in exchange for draft capital that can help build a future roster, so be it.
“Going forward for the club,” Eberflus said, “it was the best move for us. We all signed off on it.”
That takes a certain patience. And it takes a mutual understanding between Poles and Eberflus. Out of the gates, their shared vision is there. Eberflus is willing to give his new boss time to replenish and upgrade the roster. As long as the patience is reciprocated.
“When I was younger, maybe I looked through a straw,” Eberflus said. “But I think now you have to look that (big-picture) way. You always have to have a microscope and a telescope. You have to be able to look and see down the road. But you also have to come back to your business (too).”
In the early stages of his tenure with the Bears, Eberflus has vowed to lean on his faith.
“I stand on solid ground,” he said. “The wind is going to blow and there are going to be storms and there will be things that hit our facility that are unforeseen. You can’t predict that. So I think you’ve got to stand on solid ground.”
Beyond that, Eberflus believes his lengthy coaching career — from his start as a graduate assistant at Toledo in the early 1990s to his last role as the Indianapolis Colts defensive coordinator — has prepared him to succeed.
“I’ve been doing this 30 years,” he said. “Now I’m the head football coach of the Chicago Bears. I’ve seen a lot of ways to do it and a lot of ways not to do it and I feel very confident in the way we’re going to do it.”
That confidence will count for something, especially early on. So, too, Poles insists, will Eberflus’ emotional intelligence, the ability to be ultra-demanding but in a caring fashion. That, the new GM believes, will go a long way toward bringing out the best in Bears players.
If all goes according to plan, Eberflus will be able to use that confidence and those deeper connections to help build the winning program he envisions.
That’s far easier said than done. Four or five springs from now, NFL coaches will gather at a posh resort somewhere in Florida or Arizona and take a group photo to commemorate a new moment. That portrait will look much, much different than the one snapped by the fountain Monday morning.
With his steady nature and the proper amount of urgency, Eberflus hopes to keep himself in the mix for such photographic moments.
()