It was supposedly a new day in Chicago. Ultimately, it’s same-old, same-old.
The NFL has dysfunctional teams. And, as our friend Big Cat says, dysfunctional teams do dysfunctional things. (The attached video has a new twist on that line.)
Dysfunction flows from the top of an organization, splashing on everyone below. And even as the Bears have beefed up the top of the front office, pushing out Ted Phillips and replacing him with Kevin Warren, there’s only so much Warren can do to stem the tide.
That’s giving Warren the benefit of the doubt as to the bizarre decision to allow coach Matt Eberflus to conduct a day-after press conference before firing him. Surely, Bears ownership knew he’d be grilled about his job. Surely, they knew he’d be inclined to project confidence — especially if they didn’t fire him or, at a minimum, postpone his press conference.
That’s what should have happened. For any team that has any doubt as to whether it will be firing its coach on the day he’s due to have a press conference, postpone the press conference.
Letting Eberflus do his press conference before firing him is the front-office equivalent of the clock-management disaster that sparked the unprecedented decision by the franchise to fire a head coach during the season.
Wherever the decision originated, it’s the kind of thing that illustrates why bad teams stay bad. They do things that defy common sense off the field. That lack of common sense makes its way onto the field.
Whatever the reason for firing Eberflus after his press conference, it shouldn’t have happened that way. Unless he wasn’t going to be fired before the press conference and did something to justify his firing during or after the press conference, a properly functioning team would have fired him before the press conference. Or it would have postponed the press conference.
Functionality is a pass-fail test. The Bears failed, badly, on Friday. To anyone who’s confused as to how the pro football team in a big city with a much smaller city’s passion for football, don’t be.
Dysfunctional teams do dysfunctional things. On Thursday at the end of the game and on Friday after the Eberflus press conference, the Bears did dysfunctional things.
The only question is whether they’ll keep doing dysfunctional things.
