Bears president Kevin Warren was in a suite high above the mess his team was making on the field at SoFi Stadium, but he could not escape the embarrassment. While his top priority surely is solving the team’s stadium situation, he’s supervising the football side of the organization, as well.
By the third quarter, Warren’s flip card with the Bears’ and Chargers’ depth charts and roster was thoroughly marked up in blue ink with notes he’d presumably been taking on the debacle. A lawyer, an executive and a businessman, Warren said on his first day at Halas Hall that he had the expertise to evaluate general manager Ryan Poles, coach Matt Eberflus and everyone who takes a snap for the Bears.
“I’ll be involved,” Warren assured when he was hired, saying he’d be in constant communication with Poles and would deliver “unvarnished” honesty about what he sees.
Warren won’t need an outside consultant like Bill Polian or Ernie Accorsi to come in and illuminate all the Bears’ problems. He has been in the NFL more than two decades, including with the Rams’ 1999 championship team. Warren knows what winners look like.
“I’ve been around it enough to understand,” Warren said.
This is a new era for the Bears. Warren didn’t step down as commissioner of the Big Ten to sit by idly and watch the team continue its endless meandering. There’s going to be more scrutiny and less leeway than when George McCaskey and Ted Phillips called the shots.
So when the game against the Chargers spun out of control for the Bears on “Sunday Night Football,” NBC naturally went straight up the chain of command and cut to a shot of Warren in a navy pinstripe suit with a bright orange tie looking down at his flailing team.
What must he have been thinking as he exhaled emphatically?
That has been the question on everyone’s mind as the Bears have ricocheted from fiasco to fiasco this season.
Warren has been around, stopping in press boxes, greeting reporters in the hallway and walking through the home locker room at Soldier Field but hasn’t spoken publicly since the season started. A Bears spokesperson declined an interview request for Warren, saying any questions about the state of the team should be directed to Poles and Eberflus.
Typically the boss is a better authority on that topic.
The stadium is important for Warren, but it’ll be several years before that opens. The Bears hope to have a functional, flourishing football team much sooner than that. Ensuring it happens is as important as anything else on his ever-expanding to-do list.
“I know it looks like we’re far away,” Poles said this week. “It’s been really hard, especially from where we started last year, trying to build this and do it the right way. . . . What I see from [Eberflus] on a daily basis [is] a grown man that has leadership skills to get this thing out of the hole and into where it needs to be.”
But if Warren is taking notes every day like he was at SoFi, here’s what he would’ve jotted down in a season that began with playoff aspirations but capsized almost immediately:
• The Bears opened with a blowout loss to a bad Packers team, fell apart at the end against the Buccaneers, got blasted by the Chiefs and threw away a huge lead against the Broncos at home as Eberflus bypassed a go-ahead field goal in the final minutes to start 0-4.
• The game against the Chargers was out of hand early; the Bears were down 30-7 before an empty touchdown at the end. NFL Network and Chargers radio analyst Daniel Jeremiah later described the Bears’ roster as being “10 players away from being 10 players away.”
• Quarterback Justin Fields has made modest progress, but the bulk of his statistics came in two games against weak opponents, and he went public about being overcoached by offensive coordinator Luke Getsy.
• Wide receiver Chase Claypool, thought to be a key acquisition by Poles last season, wore out his welcome with poor play and attitude. He was exiled from the building, then traded to the Dolphins for a late pick swap in 2025 — a brutal outcome after trading the No. 32 overall pick to get him.
• Defensive coordinator Alan Williams, a longtime Eberflus cohort, resigned in controversy in September over what multiple sources said was inappropriate behavior. Then the Bears fired running backs coach David Walker for misconduct this week.
Those are merely the broad strokes as the team slid to 2-6 and Eberflus’ record spilled to 5-20. Warren prides himself on tending to every detail.
Throughout the various episodes, Eberflus has struggled to convey control in managing these situations publicly. He was hired largely because of his defensive expertise and management ability. But being the public voice of the organization is a huge part of the job, too.
The morning Williams resigned, Eberflus held a news conference in which he wouldn’t even answer whether he’d spoken to Williams or if he was still on staff. When Claypool finally pushed the Bears too far, Eberflus couldn’t keep straight whether Claypool had skipped the game or the team told him to stay home. In his announcement of Walker’s departure, he kept talking about the team being 2-2 in its last four games.
Warren is a serious person. It’s reasonable to presume all of this falls short of his standards. It would be reassuring to hear that from him. Everyone wants to know that he sees what they’re seeing and shares their displeasure. And, more important, they want to know what he’ll do about it and when.
