Q&A with Chicago Bears coach Matt Eberflus: On the challenges of a 3-14 season, his relationship with QB Justin Fields and more

Chicago Bears coach Matt Eberflus sat in a golf cart at the Indianapolis Colts training camp facility about 50 minutes before the start of a spirited joint practice between his current team and his former one.

In the year and a half since the Bears hired Eberflus away from his defensive coordinator position with the Colts, the 53-year-old coaching veteran has faced major challenges as he guided a rebuilding Bears team through a franchise-worst 14 losses.

But just a few weeks ahead of his second Bears season, Eberflus believes he and his coaching staff have set the foundation for future success. He spoke with the Tribune about how he kept perspective during a trying first season, how he has grown his relationship with quarterback Justin Fields and what gives him hope for the 2023 season.

Note: This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

When you look back at last season, 3-14 with a 10-game losing streak, what was the most challenging part for you as a coach?

Going through the season last year, I was most proud of the guys, our coaches, our staff, the players, and how they stuck to that whole routine of going through the process of the week. We know all we have is what we do on the practice field during the season and how we perform there. And I believe we did a really good job of laying the foundation of the HITS principle with our entire football team.

(Implementing it on offense) was great because I got to talk with Chris Morgan, Jim Dray, Coach (David) Walker, Tyke (Tolbert) and Coach (Luke) Getsy and all those guys about, “Hey, let’s standardize this, of what we want to see on tape, what we want to see in practice. What does it mean to finish and play with great effort? What does it mean to play with great intensity? What does that look like on tape, and how can we measure it?” So it’s measurable, so it’s a tactical thing that players can grab onto. They can look at it and say, ”You know what, OK, we’re asking everybody to do this. This is what the standards are, and this is what we’re going to get accomplished.”

I believe that’s why we were competitive in a lot of the games — and we will be competitive in games — because of the style with which we played. That’s the foundation we laid last year: how we go about our business in meetings, how we go about our business on the practice field and how we play the games the right way. Education is a big part of it too, the education piece for the players, for the coaches. Being a smart, disciplined football team that’s really good in situations, and I think we grew there as well.

You talk about laying the foundation. We on the outside probably understand better now what Ryan Poles’ vision is for this team and how this is a rebuild that could take a few years. But this is a win-now league. So as a coach, how do you keep that perspective personally of the big picture?

Coaches and everybody at the Bears organization, it’s a week-to-week thing. That’s the way the league is, and that’s the way you have to live. And then you have to flush the last week and move to the next week. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a 10-game win streak, which I’ve been a part of those long win streaks, or if you lost a game or lost two in a row, it’s always hard to deal with, but you have to reset. It’s the old 24-hour rule where you just reset. I know it’s cliché, but you have to do that because you’ve got a new set of circumstances and a new challenge ahead of you every week, with the skill set and scheme you’re facing, with the health of your football team week to week, where you are morale-wise in terms of your football team. That ebbs and flows as you go. And you’ve got to make sure you’re steady in the process of that.

I know you have a lot of coaching mentors who can help you keep that perspective. Did you talk to anybody to help you keep that focus on the week-to-week rather than panicking when you got into that losing streak?

That whole mindset of the week-to-week process was tested. When you go through adversity like that, you really find out what you believe to be true. Because you look at your practices and your mentality and the way you go about the week, and I’m telling you, we were steady all the way through. And that was really cool to watch.

But to answer your question about mentors, I just modeled the behavior that I saw. When I saw Coach (Gary) Pinkel — those first couple of years in Missouri, we were not that good — I saw him be steady. Frank Reich, during that first part (in Indianapolis in 2018), we were 1-5 and all of the sudden now we turn it around, he was steady. If it was (Rod) Marinelli, the first year in ’13 when we switched the defense over to this style back in Dallas, that whole year we weren’t that great, but we stuck with the principles, the standards and we held ourselves, the coaches, the players accountable. And sure enough, 2014, boom, we had an awesome defense and we were rolling after that point.

So it was just really modeling the behavior I saw from my mentors. I didn’t have to call them, didn’t have to say anything. I was just doing what I saw them do. So that was pretty cool. I’ve always been very observant of people and of behavior, and I think that served me well last year.

One of the points of the season that I thought as a coach probably would have been the most challenging was when Roquan Smith and Robert Quinn were traded in a span of a couple of weeks. How did you feel like you managed that looking back on it now?

That right there can be a morale issue because you’re losing two Pro Bowl-type players in a span of 10 days maybe. I think Ryan was very upfront with the key players on defense, as was I. We had a plan for being upfront and honest with those guys. We just put everything on the table and we just told them, ”This is why we did it. This is what the landscape was.” And they were great. They were very understanding, and they were very realistic about what it was, and they put their eyes forward, as did we. And we just moved forward from there.

What were one or two things you learned about yourself as a coach in the last year and a half?

When you have all those years behind you, you just rely on your experiences, and I just did that. I relied on my experiences, the things I saw that worked. Going through five head coaching interviews before I got this job, you really start to ingrain what your philosophy is and what you want to put down your first year as a head coach, and we accomplished that. I believed we did a nice job with the foundation, where you can build something very strong for the future. That’s what I learned about, that we stayed the course and we’re continuing to do that.

Is there anything you would have done differently?

You know what, looking back on it, I can honestly say that I would have done it the same way. I feel good about the things we did. Did we make mistakes? Yeah, we did. We’re always going to make a mistake here and there, but we shifted to correct it quickly. And I thought the coaches operated well and so did the players among that adversity.

When you are dealing with the stress and pressure that comes with this job, what do you do to reset mentally?

During the season, it’s family time for me. I spend time with my family, which was hard last year because my family was still in Indy. They hadn’t moved up. So that was difficult. But typically I’m just spending time with the girls, just unwinding that way on a Friday before the game.

And then during the offseason, I take trips to Florida. My mom is down in Florida, so I always get to see her a couple of times. Sometimes right after, late January or hopefully late February. And then get some golf in there and unwind.

You’re a book guy, right? What was on your summer reading list?

“The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple (But Not Easy)” by Adm. William H. McRaven. That’s my new one going forward. And of course, I’m always into Scripture.

You’ve talked about how much you sat in on the offensive meetings last year. How do you feel like your relationship with Justin Fields has grown in the last year and a half?

That was a big goal for me to do that, to build that relationship with the offensive staff and with the quarterback. That was the main thing, to really understand how they process, how they go about their game week. In terms of Justin and I, it really grew. Because I was in there with him. I was always supportive. I think everybody when you first come in as a coordinator on either side, they look at you that same way (as a coordinator for one side). I think it was important for everybody to say, ”Hey, this is our head coach, and this is a football team.”

I wanted to make sure there were no lines of defense over here, offense over here and special teams doesn’t matter. You get that a lot in organizations, and that’s something I’m never going to allow to happen. Because I believe it’s not offense, defense and special teams. It’s about being a Chicago Bear. … You wouldn’t be able to tell if you came into our office who coached on offense, who coached on defense and who was the special teams coach. And if you walked into our locker room, you couldn’t tell who played what position. They’re just the Chicago Bears. That was one of the main goals. That process of me going over to the offense and also being the head coach is beneficial to accomplish that.

I read in the Bears’ Day in the Life with you about the darts and basketball competitions you have with the quarterbacks.

I’m ahead right now.

Ahead of all the quarterbacks?

Yes. We’ve thrown two dart games already, and I am the lowest both times. We have more people in there this year, so that’s pretty cool for me to say that. And I won the first hoops contest too. So I’m doing pretty good.

At what point last year did you know that Justin was the quarterback you guys wanted to move forward with? And what told you that?

You could just see the growth of him taking off. Everybody would point to the New England week, but I would point to a couple of weeks before that. I just felt him growing and getting more confident with the offense, with the terminology. That’s learning a whole new foreign language in one year’s time. To have him do that and function and really be on point with all of the calls and the checks and the things we do at the line of scrimmage, that gave me a great deal of confidence we were working toward the right direction.

As you evaluate Justin’s growth as a passer this year, what are you going to be looking for to make sure he’s reaching the checkpoints you need him to during the regular season?

You just look at the efficiency, how he operates, and all of those things will tell you he’s doing a nice job. It’s not just him. It’s never going to be just him. It’s going to be our protection, the route disciplines, how well we run the football, to set up the game for him. And not only that, it’s going to be how we play defense, how we take the ball away. Do we get a lot of three-and-outs? Do we make stops and sudden changes? Do we take the ball away and take it to a short field for the offense? And then the kicking game, the field position game and scoring in the kicking game. It’s a whole team effort to get this done. He’s one piece of that. Everybody looks at the quarterback, but winning entails a lot more things than just one guy.

As far as your defense last year, understanding the talent you had and the trades and the injuries, does it still bother you as a defensive coach that the team only had 20 sacks?

Of course. That’s not a number that you want. It’s like any part of the team we need to correct. We didn’t have enough sacks. We gave up too many sacks. The rush offense was awesome, but the rush defense needs to improve. Passing on both sides needs to improve. We have a lot of work to do. We know that, and we’re working hard to get that done. This is a new year. Our eyes are forward. We know it’s an entirely different football team, personnel wise. Scheme wise, we’re adjusting and moving forward. So it’s an exciting time.

Were you happy with the number of the takeaways you had, about middle of the league, given the emphasis in the HITS principle?

It’s middle. Of course we want to be in the top five in that category, and we’re working that way. It’s about being fanatical about it every single day and having it on your mind and then practicing it. You have to practice those things, taking it away and taking care of it.

Going back to the foundation you were talking about setting, what characteristics do you see in this current team?

We spent a lot of time in the offseason in relationships. Instead of doing longer team meetings, I had shorter team meetings. And we would spend 30 minutes or so, over 10 weeks, once a week that we would spend in building those relationships, getting to know each other. … We did it with the position group first, then we mixed a unit once, twice, made it offense and defense, and mixed the team a few more times. You might have a different group of 12 guys in your room with a coach, and we’re in there just discussing yourself, your background, your upbringing, where you came from, your experiences. What was the highlight of yours? What was the hardship of yours? What was something you went through? Who’s your hero? And people really open up when it’s that, and you get to learn something about somebody that you wouldn’t know. We encourage guys to intermix when you’re at lunch or when you’re outside of football. Certainly have meals with your position but let’s do that with other parts of the team too. I think it’s very helpful to do that.

The offseason was also spent on a lot of, how can we do things better as an individual? We wanted to really improve the mind, body and spirit of the man that’s working in the building. Along with the interconnectedness of the players, we wanted to work on the individual as well. The performance staff, we had (Brent) Salazar to do the physical part of it, Jimmy (Arthur). Carla (Suber) and Mike Wiley did more of the spiritual stuff and building the mind, and we really used those guys. Guys were trying different techniques in terms of the mental approach, the physical approach. It was really good, and guys really enjoyed that part of it, that we invested the time in relationships and into them.

You talk a lot about wanting passionate players. Who are one or two players who embody that and why?

Passion comes out in a lot of different ways. Some guys are quiet passionate, and you can see it in their play. That’s the number one thing is we see it in your play. If you play with passion, you can feel it. A guy like DJ (Moore), he is very passionate, but he doesn’t say a lot. He works the hardest. He trains the hardest. He goes the hardest. Justin is the same type of guy. He’s working hard. First guy in, last guy to leave. And then you have a guy like (Chase) Claypool that is more verbal, with passion and emotion and has fire. And that’s awesome too. (Jaquan) Brisker is the same way as that. He’s emotional. He’s violent in his play. He’s passionate. … I could keep going. Tremaine (Edmunds) is also very passionate. You need that on a football team to take it to the second level, the third level and the top.

You have a lot of new players but also are counting on some returning players to make leaps. Who do you see as a returning player who can make the most growth?

It’s been my experience that second-year players make the biggest jump. The rookies we played a ton last year, those guys are expected to take a big leap because of that experience piece. We had the most rookie snaps by anybody by a thousand last year. So we’re expecting to see a big jump from those guys.

New President Kevin Warren’s arrival was a big offseason story. How can he help you as a coach and can he affect results on the field?

I would say yes because we have a mutual friend in Coach (Tony) Dungy. He was the Uncommon Award winner for Coach Dungy’s award this year. I was fortunate to go up to Minnesota to help present that award and give that on behalf of the Chicago Bears with Coach Dungy. … It’s really neat that we have a guy that’s in the same area in terms of what he believes a football team should look like. He’s passionate. He’s a very hard worker. And all of the things he brings in terms of the kind of man he is, the man of character he is, is going to permeate throughout the entire organization.

When you look at this team now, what gives you hope?

I can just feel the spirit of the team, the closeness of the team, the relationships building, and you can feel that the guys care for each other. And like I said at the beginning, all we have is what’s on the practice field. We’re going to see it out there first, the passion, the emotion and the execution. We’re starting to see that more and more and more. But we still need more precision and more detail as we get ready for the first game.