The picture painted so often in the NFL seems to be the coach from the offensive side and his quarterback.Famously, there was Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr, Joe Montana and Bill Walsh. Now, there is Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, even if the Chiefs coach takes his passer’s nuggies.
It does work the other way, though. The coach from the defensive side and the quarterback can be tied together in football wedlock of sorts. There has been no more productive duo than Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.
The Bears seem to have this kind of bond between Justin Fields and Matt Eberflus, though obviously on a much less productive scale to this point. And if such a bond exists then it would seem unlikely they’d be trying to break it up in a few weeks after the season ends.
“I think it’s kinda refreshing for a quarterback to be able to see the other perspective of it,” Eberflus said. “We talk coverages all the time, we talk what the defense is trying to do the offense or to that particular player. I think it’s another way to look at it, and I think the education is a dual education.
“So know he looks at it through the lens of an offensive–you know, ‘This is how we look at it, this is how we took a route or took a particular run play.’ Then you flip it and see exactly what a defense is trying to do and know the rules. That’s a thing that I think is most important, when you get the rules for the defensive coverages and you understand how to defeat those rules. I think that helps out not only the offensive staff, but the quarterback, too.”
Gaining Personnel Knowledge
When Eberflus first took over as coach, he paid a great deal of attention to the offensive side because it was not his area of expertise, but also to get more involved in learning more about his quarterback.
“It was intentional for sure that first year to stay with the offense a bunch and work with them and be in the quarterback room, much more than I have been this year,” he said. “It’s really important for the quarterback of the franchise, a quarterback of any franchise to be close to the head coach because those are the two guys who really—let’s face it—get a lot of criticism and that’s all part of the biz.
“You have to stay steady, be confident, be clutch when it matters and be consistent.”
Eberflus admitted those words—confident, consistent and clutch—were borrowed from his kicker, Cairo Santos.
“I just use it,” he said. “It’s a heck of a one. I think it’s important that a quarterback and a head coach have that.”
The admiration is great fairly extensive and goes beyond the sport.
“Yeah, just the kind of man he is, right?” Eberflus said. “The work ethic he has. The character that he has. He’s an honest guy, right? And guys really draw to him, just like a lot of our guys.
“A lot of our guys are like that. We have high character in our locker room. We have high character throughout the whole building. And you can certainly see that and feel that.”
On the field, Eberflus gave Fields the weekly goal of 200. It was two touchdowns, zero interceptions and zero sacks.
“It’s really simple: ‘Hey, score two TDs, zero turnovers and zero sacks,’ and he’s improved on those numbers,” Eberflus said.
They don’t count the interceptions on two Hail Mary throws, one of which wasn’t even an interception but was picked up after it fell to the ground. So he has just one interception since coming back from his thumb injury.
“And the sack number’s been way down,” Eberflus said. “He’s done a good job of getting rid of the ball and really looking down the field and delivering the ball down the field for some big strikes. So he’s done well that way.”
It would seem he has come up short of TD passes but he’s not picky about how Fields gets those two TDs each game. They can be runs.
“It doesn’t matter,” Eberflus said. “We can take them any way we can get them.”
In that case, he is above the goal but there are other aspects of the game Eberflus sees as improvements.
“He’s done a good job of getting rid of the ball and really looking down the field and delivering the ball down the field for some big strikes,” Eberflus said. “So he’s done well that way.”
The Big Picture
If you take that QB-coach relationship and marry it up with where the team is defensively as a budding dominant group, and where the players think they are on offense, it produces one big happy rosy picture with the Bears heading toward decision time. They’re working together, have survived a very rough period and the coach and quarterback now seem to be interlocked.
It’s possible some opinions could change in the next two weeks but the positive trend set in motion is undeniable.
It’s not easy for a new team president to come in and divert real progress in another direction just for the sake of installing his own people. This high-handed approach has been tried in Chicago before by a GM. His name was Phil Emery and he lasted two years because the team’s direction before he gutted it was far better than what it was two years later.
As much as people want to paint the picture of Bears president Kevin Warren being a football guy who knows enough about the game to avoid rash and silly decisions like the Bears made in the past, you have to wonder if this is actually true. His front-office exposure in St. Louis, Detroit and Minnesota was aimed in directions other than football personnel.
Does doubling the win total, possibly even winning eight games, cause anyone to think they need a change of leadership or even quarterback?
“I think you turn on our tape and the tape looks much better and there’s a lot of games–three I can think of in particular–that you put on the tape and if you didn’t have the scoreboard after every play reel, you’d say ‘oh, they won that game pretty convincingly.’ ” tight end Cole Kmet said.
Those would be the losses to Cleveland, Detroit and Denver.
“Obviously, those games didnt turn out how we wanted to but you just look at the tape and guys are, there’s a lot of guys here in this locker room playing at a high level right now,” Kmet said. “Those games are just a matter about the finishing. I do think the results have been there. I know we got off to a slow start, but you look at what we’ve done the past two months and we’re a good football team.
“I think you watch the Browns last night (vs. the Jets), that’s a good football team. That’s a team that I thought throughout the game we were the better team and a game we should’ve won. So I think there’s a lot of evidence of us being up on the rise and I think that’s been showing itself for the past couple months for sure.”
Add this all together and it’s not the kind of gloom-and-doom firing disaster being predicted and even reported through “whispers” and innuendo by national writers, broadcasters and podcasters six to eight weeks ago, if not three or four weeks ago.
You had Eddie Jackson and Montez Sweat on Wednesday calling it all a family atmosphere.
This might not even mean Caleb Williams coming to Chicago. Somewhere he’s probably tweeting out a like to that.
And the offensive coordinator?
Maybe that’s the target for next week’s pregame Eberflus spin.
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