With enough problems already, Bears coach Ben Johnson doesn't need a loss to predecessor Matt Eberflus
The first lesson of being a Bears head coach is that it can always get worse. Never assume you’ve hit rock bottom. If that’s not written in the company handbook, it should be.
The pressure is rising on Ben Johnson just two games into his tenure after a pair of discouraging losses and his recent venting about the Bears’ poor effort against the Lions and subpar practice habits. And next, he’s facing not just the Cowboys on Sunday at Soldier Field, but his predecessor.
Matt Eberflus, whose firing last November started the Bears on a path to hire Johnson, resurfaced as the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator. Since Johnson is the Bears’ offensive play caller, they’ll be going head-to-head.
Imagine throwing a home loss to Eberflus on the pile of problems.
Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer already has.
“The best thing in the world would be for us to play well, win this game," he said, "and give Matt Eberflus the game ball."
That'd be Johnson’s nightmare.
It won’t be the first matchup between him and Eberflus, and while Eberflus became a punchline locally after going 14-32 with a string of embarrassing errors in games and as a public face of the team, Johnson isn’t laughing at him.
Johnson was a low-level assistant for the Dolphins and faced the Colts when Eberflus was their defensive coordinator, then squared off with him as Lions offensive coordinator when Eberflus coached the Bears and called their defense the last three seasons.
“Make no mistake about it: It was one of the more challenging defenses we faced when I was in Detroit,” Johnson said, being generous given that the Lions averaged a healthy 27.8 points per game against Eberflus.
Eberflus is respected as a play caller, though, and even amid a major rebuild, he improved the Bears’ defense from 32nd to 20th to 13th. He also has as good of a book as anyone on how to cause headaches for quarterback Caleb Williams.
Both coaches are off to rough starts in their new jobs.
The Bears managed just 17 points offensively in the opener against the Vikings as they squandered a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter at home, then got trounced 52-21 by the Lions.
The Cowboys are 1-1, but have allowed 30.5 points per game, fifth-highest in the NFL.
Eberflus downplayed his return to Chicago leading up to the game, saying he hadn’t even thought about the reaction he’ll get from fans who spent much of his three seasons booing him off the field and chanting for his firing. He said little about his time with the Bears this week other than, “The sun comes up and you move forward.”
Eberflus was long gone by last December, when Johnson unofficially kicked off his candidacy for the Bears job by unveiling a trick play called “Stumblebum” in a blowout win at Soldier Field. If he’s got anything else especially clever, this would be a good time to use it.
Johnson’s top task is to succeed where Eberflus failed and launch Williams toward stardom. Two games in, Williams’ numbers are relatively in line with what he put up as a rookie: 61.5 completion percentage, 208.5 yards per game, three touchdown passes, one interception and an 89.1 passer rating.
Williams and Eberflus had an offseason back-and-forth in which the quarterback said he wasn’t properly taught to prepare and the coach insisted otherwise. Like Eberflus, he didn’t care to get back into their history and would rather “move past all of that.”
The Bears as an organization would like to move past that entire era, but the only way to do that is to take measurable steps toward something better. Their new coach beating their old one wouldn’t fix everything, but it’d certainly be progress.