With a playoff run off the table, Bears coach Matt Eberflus likely will spend the next two weeks or so getting peppered with big-picture questions. That’s what matters most at this stage as team president Kevin Warren and, presumably, general manager Ryan Poles decide what to do with Eberflus, offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and quarterback Justin Fields.
Eberflus seemed to sense that Monday, coming off a meltdown loss to the middling Browns, and shifted slightly into campaign mode as he rattled off a list of ways the Bears have improved in his opening statement. All the progress he pointed to, though, was on defense.
The floundering offense, in which Fields has yet to flourish and Getsy has yet to make a convincing case he’s right for the job, has been an ongoing concern. When Eberflus faced questions about Getsy on Wednesday, he kept trying to steer the conversation back to the game Sunday against the Cardinals.
But there’s no avoiding it at this point, and Eberflus relented by saying he will assess Getsy at the end of the season. And while that was somewhat of a non-answer, it said a lot. If things were going well, or even decently, it would’ve been easier to deliver a strong defense of him. Those questions aren’t getting asked to teams with thriving offenses.
When pushed on whether evaluating Getsy was a pressing, big-picture concern that couldn’t merely be brushed aside in the name of focusing on the Cardinals, Eberflus said, “Sure. Oh yeah. No question, no question. And we’re gonna assess all those things at the end.”
Eberflus chose Getsy for this job, hiring him after three seasons as Aaron Rodgers’ quarterbacks coach, and cited the Packers’ offensive efficiency as a key factor. Eberflus added that as he worked toward becoming a head coach, Getsy was “on my radar for a while.” So any frustration with Getsy is a smear on Eberflus as well.
But distancing himself from Getsy now and dismissing him next month might be Eberflus’ best path to keep his own job. The head coach is responsible for everything, but if Eberflus has the defense clicking and can get to 7-10 or 8-9, he could make the argument that all he needs is a reboot on offense.
Getsy and Fields can’t come back together. One or both must go. That was clear two games into the season when Fields went public with the complaint that he was being over-coached and wasn’t able to play freely.
The Bears must figure out whether Fields would soar under a new coordinator or whether Getsy should be entrusted with developing the next quarterback. And if neither is true, which seems likely, then they need to replace both.
Getsy was asked to fix a long list of problems in the wake of coach Matt Nagy’s firing at the end of the 2021 season, when the Bears went 6-11, found a million ways to hinder Fields’ development and scored the sixth-fewest points in the NFL.
There were many boxes he needed to check, but Fields was the biggest. Fields is far from perfect, but that was a pretty good opportunity for a first-time offensive coordinator to inherit a talented quarterback one year removed from being drafted No. 11 overall.
Three seasons in, it’s still difficult to ascertain exactly what Fields’ ceiling is, but surely it’s at least a little higher than this. In 25 starts under Getsy, Fields has an 85.4 passer rating and a 6-19 record. He threw 20 or fewer passes in five of those and threw for fewer than 200 yards in 17 of them. The Bears have scored fewer than 20 points 15 times, including twice in the last three games.
Even if Getsy gets a pass for his first season, when Poles blew up the roster and left personnel holes all over the offense, he’s had plenty with which to work this season, but the Bears are 22nd in scoring, 30th in yards passing and 32nd in third-down conversion rate, and only the Giants have committed more turnovers. The Bears are 14th in rushing, but even that supposed strength has failed them recently.
In the loss to the Browns, who are good defensively but allowed 92 points over their previous three games, the Bears’ offense managed only a touchdown on a possession that started at the Cleveland 1-yard line and a field goal. In 15 possessions, they punted 10 times (including eight three-and-outs) and turned the ball over on downs once.
Getsy, who will talk at his weekly news conference Thursday, faced tough questions about his job security back in September. After a season-opening loss to the Packers in which quarterback Jordan Love was smooth while Fields was stilted, Getsy said of the outside criticism of him, “I know that it’s there, for sure… That doesn’t really affect me or what I’m going to do.”
But by now the pressure certainly is coming from within the building, and Eberflus doesn’t seem to have the margin to keep waiting.
