Jimmy Johnson was in no mood to sugarcoat anything when talking about what he saw from Matt Eberflus and the Chicago Bears at the end of the Thanksgiving Day loss to the Detroit Lions.
Trailing 26-23 and with one time-out remaining, Chicago faced a third-and-26 from the Detroit 41. The Bears could have snapped the ball with about 15 seconds remaining, more than enough time to run a play, get into field goal range and call a time-out. But Caleb Williams and the Chicago offense looked flustered and didn’t get the ball snapped until about six seconds remained. Williams attempted a long pass to Rome Odunze, which fell incomplete with no time remaining, ending the game.
During the halftime show of Fox’s game between the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys, Johnson joined in the chorus of people offering sharp criticism of Chicago coach Matt Eberflus. While Johnson has seen a lot of football in his life, he couldn’t recall ever seeing anything like that.
“In 70 years of coaching at all three levels, I’ve never seen dysfunction that cost a team an opportunity to win the game,” Johnson said. “Obviously he’s got a rookie quarterback. Different teams do it different ways. I handled clock management and time-outs. Sometimes the quarterback and the coach does it. Sometimes a coach has a coach in the box talking to him about clock management. But when Eberflus saw that they were off track and there was dysfunction, he should have called time-out. He says he wanted to communicate to the rookie quarterback to throw an out route, stop the clock, then call a time-out.”
Jimmy Johnson went scorched earth and absolutely lit up Matt Eberflus at halftime of the FOX game. pic.twitter.com/mRMwIobE5N
— Josh Hill (@jdavhill) November 28, 2024
“They did not throw an out route,” Terry Bradshaw correctly observed.
“That was never communicated,” Johnson responded.
“Regardless of what the chain of command was, Eberflus has the ability to say, ‘call time-out,'” Howie Long said.
“Call time-out,” Johnson reaffirmed.
A season that once had some promise for the Bears now looks completely lost. The Thanksgiving loss was Chicago’s sixth in a row, moving the Bears to 4-8 on the season. Worse, four of the six losses on the current losing streak have been by three points or less. As the season has gone south, Eberflus has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism.
[Josh Hill on X, Photo Credit: Fox]
