Matt Eberflus is not in a great situation at the moment. Once again, his Chicago Bears are floundering in September, plagued by offensive issues and a lack of identity. Frustration with the head coach is building. Fans are tired of how unprepared his teams look, especially early in games. Eberflus makes it even worse with his in-game decision-making. Two awful challenges against Houston and two even worse timeouts in the second half against Indianapolis. Yes, he is a quality defensive play caller, but that isn’t enough.
One person probably isn’t surprised by this. Colts linebacker Zaire Franklin had a contentious relationship with Eberflus during their time together. On his “The Trenches Podcast,” he made it clear his opinion of the Bears head coach is low. Franklin accused him of underhanded tactics, always sabotaging him when the linebacker made headway on the roster.
“I told him, I said ‘When I lost, I lost.’ I done lost before, bro. My issue came when I won,” Franklin said. “When I won, you ain’t give me my victory. You always stepped on it. You always did something slick. You always went out of your way to make sure I didn’t shine the way that I knew I could because you knew who I was. That’s where my issue came. Me and him, one on one, I told him that…
…I really didn’t understand how really pissed off I was about that s—,” Franklin said. “Every single time. Every single chance he got, bro, he pushed me back to the bottom, bro. Every time I was climbing up (he) would pull the ladder, bro. Every time I had a rope he’d cut the line. I had to start all over.”
Matt Eberflus had a habit of making excuses.
Franklin said he would say he didn’t control substitutions and other little things like that. The coach would duck accountability and avoid confrontations. Clearly, the veteran linebacker has some hard feelings about what happened during their four seasons together. He didn’t get a chance to excel until after Eberflus left. It must’ve been extra satisfying to get that win last Sunday against Chicago. Franklin probably wasn’t surprised by how out of sorts the Bears looked at times.
It is unknown how much of this is true and how much is exaggerated. Matt Eberflus has plenty of players who like him and feel he was a good coach in Indianapolis. All Bears fans have to go on is what they see right now. Eberflus remains a top-notch defensive coordinator. As a head coach, he is underwhelming in almost every category. A loss on Sunday to the Los Angeles Rams could start the clock on his time in Chicago.
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Meh, what’s another 4 years down the drain, amirite? And then another 4, and then another 4 years after that, and then it’s 40 years since the Bears were a team that scared anyone. I couldve told ya this YEARS ago when they hired Eberfluser and it was a completely uninspired, defensive-minded coach of a hire. But hey, like i said, what’s another 4 years of our lives wasted.
I had several different comments that I wanted to make on this story, but my overwhelming feeling always came back to this one gut reaction that I had to shout out.
STFU, Eric Lambert! We have enough negative crap to deal with without your inventing more! We need solutions, not this.