- Mark Potash at the Chicago Sun-Times addresses the fact that new Bears head coach Matt Eberflus must be more than a good defensive coach.
But it’s Eberflus’ impact as a head coach that figures to determine his success — unlike Matt Nagy, who only needed to build an offense and could not do it. It’s clear Eberflus makes a good first impression. The Bears need someone who can sustain the initial impact.
“[Eberflus’s] coaching style is very intentional about every move,” [Colts head coach Frank Reich said. “There’s a clear standard, there’s a clear process and there’s a clear vision for what it’s going to take.
I’ll disagree with Potash on one thing. Nagy needed to have more of an impact as a head coach, too. Nagy’s greatest failure was the fact that he never built an offense that worked. But that’s at least in large part because his impact as a head coach was never great enough to get more out of his players. That includes the defense where a lot of mental mistakes were made last year.
Let’s hope Eberflus does better.
- Kevin Fishbain at The Athletic talks with Akron head coach Joe Moorehead, who coached former Packers quarterback coach and new Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy in college and hired him as an assistant afterwards. Moorehead predicts the kind of scheme that the Bears will run.
- Fishbain continues on how Eberflus sees his role with the defense.
- Fishbain further quotes Eberflus on the Bears defensive scheme change:
- Adam Johns at The Athletic quotes quarterback Justin Fields on what he thinks it will be like having a defensive head coach:
- Fishbain quotes new general manager Ryan Poles on the use of analytics in the front office:
“Whether it’s some of the things you see with (Aaron) Rodgers, like inside-zone read and throwing something quick to the flat, or throwing some of the things down the field that are RPO-based and some of the same route structures that we’ve done, Luke is a smart, smart guy and he’s carried all of the great ideas and concepts that he’s learned over the years,” Moorhead said.
Getsy will bring those philosophies to Halas Hall, where he’ll work with Fields.
Here’s why Moorhead sees it as a perfect fit — he describes his system as an “RPO-based run game that takes advantage of a quarterback’s running skill set, combining that with a West Coast system that takes a ton of shots down the field.”
That sounds about right. But I liked the way that former Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett described the system that he will run as the new Broncos head coach. Via Lance Sanderson at si.com.
“I think the starting point is outside zone. Outside zone on offense is what you want to do, and you want to base that off of play-pass. You want to make the defense cover the entire field. You want to take shots down the field. “
Whatever Getsy does, it needs to start with the running game to set up the play action pass with good, believable run fakes. This is the heart of most good NFL offenses and the Bears did a poor job of it.
You always got the impression that the Bears under Nagy were trying to use a downhill running game to set up play action but that they didn’t really know how to coach it. They certainly never executed it well. Hopefully that’s about to change.
The defensive coordinator, whoever it is, will be calling plays for the Bears.
“I do believe that to be the head football coach and be efficient at that, you are exactly the head football coach,” Eberflus said. “So I can be involved in all aspects of the game. So the defensive coordinator we hire will call the defensive plays. I will not do that.”
That’s probably a good idea for Eberflus, as it will allow him to oversee everything. And as someone who will have to handle calling timeouts and challenging plays for the first time in his coaching career, it’s one fewer thing to worry about. It adds some significance to the coordinator hire and might make the job more appealing, too.
It isn’t just that. It’s an indication that Eberflus wants to be a real head coach, someone who takes charge of both the offense and the defense and spends time with both. You can’t do that if you are so deep in game planning on the defensive side of the ball that you are planning to call every play.
A true head coach is involved in keeping both sides on track. You can’t do that for the offense and special teams if you are preparing to call plays before the game and calling them during it.
Eberflus did not deflect when asked about the defensive scheme, noting it will be the third time he’s involved in switching from a 3-4 defense to a 4-3.
“Will we have elements and pieces of a 3-4? Sure, we’ll have that,” he said. “We’re going to adjust and move and be flexible. We’re going to look at the talent and the skill level of the players we have and we’re going to coach and develop those guys, and we’ll fit our scheme around those players. But the foundational pieces won’t change in terms of how we play.”
This is, I think, much less of a big deal than it used to be. As Eberflus suggests will be true of the Bears, most teams are multiple to some degree now. But even more than that, the Bears have spent so much time in their nickel defense that they have played a four man line more than half the time. It’s not like Khalil Mack has never put his hand in the dirt before.
“I feel like there are some positives to that,” Fields said. “Being on the offense, you kind of know what the defense is doing, but you don’t know what fully they’re doing. You know they’re running a certain type of coverage, but when you have a defensive head coach, he’s able to explain to you what their jobs are, what their certain assignments are in a certain coverage, so I think that’s one plus on having a defensive head coach.
Hmmm…. How can you know the coverage but not know what the players are doing when they execute it?
It’s probably hard to teach a rookie quarterback everything he needs to know and I’m sure there was a lot of distillation of the concepts. But I can’t help feeling that this statement provides some insight into what went wrong with Matt Nagy when it came to getting his players, especially his quarterback, to execute the offense correctly and consistently.
Poles had an emphatic “absolutely” in response to a question about how analytics would be involved in football operations, and he said he’s impressed with those who already do that at Halas Hall.
“It’s challenging what our eyes see, and I think that’s a beautiful thing about all the data we have now is we can challenge what we see and then make the proper decision based off of that,” he said.
Maybe. There are a lot of statistics out there and a lot of ways to use them. Most people I know pick the ones that support their biases going in.
In the end, I think it’s about trusting your eyes. Statistics can help direct the to where they need to go. But seeing is always believing.
We’ll see what kind of vision Poles and his people have soon enough.
One Final Thought
Fishbain and Jahns write about Poles’s how experiences will affect his performance as general manager. This passage stood out:
“One of the places we were good at selecting players was offensive line, and Poles was really good in what he saw and how he spoke about what he saw on offensive linemen and defensive linemen, and I figured that out quickly,” [Former Chiefs general manager Scott] Pioli said. “He knew what he was talking about and he knew how to say what he was seeing. Some guys would say, ‘I just see it.’ Well, no, tell me. He’s smart, so he spoke about what he saw and could paint a picture of a player.”
I teach for a living and the best students always tell me that its not enough to think that they know the material. They says that they need to “explain it back to themselves” and when they can’t do it, they know that they haven’t really learned it. This sounds like a form of that. I consider it to be a good sign.