Ranking Matt Eberflus’ worst avoidable Bears losses, including 2 backbreaking Hail Marys

No one likes cliches, but the margin between most NFL teams is actually quite minimal. If you peruse the leaguewide scoreboard on any given Sunday, you'll find that most games are usually within one possession for a reason. More importantly, most games are often decided late in the fourth quarter.

This makes late-game management by coaches paramount. How a coach plays things in the fourth quarter is almost always the singular difference between winning and losing. Whether they're conservative or aggressive on offense and defense. Whether they use their timeouts in a prudent fashion. Whether they get everyone organized and focused for game-deciding plays. All of this process matters.

All of it.

In today's NFL, no one fails at this task more than Chicago Bears head coach Matt Eberflus -- a man who has flat-out perfected snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. It's to the point where even when the Bears put in enough of an effort to win, Eberflus will snuff his own players out with unmitigated foolishness. Eberflus now has eight losses where the Bears had at least an 80 percent win probability in the fourth quarter since he became Chicago's coach in 2022. They've blown five games where they had at least a 90 percent win probability. The odds of losing all those games are literally 1 in 68 million. Good lord.

No wonder the Bears' brain trust will very likely fire Eberflus very soon.

Because I'm a masochist, I've ranked the six worst Eberflus losses as Bears coach where a win was in hand. When you comb through this, dearest readers, understand that you are dealing with an artist who has a keen expertise in killing the vibe of his own team (hey, D.J. Moore!). Eberflus is unmatched in this regard.

Let's (sigh) dive in.

6. Bears blow two-touchdown lead in fourth quarter to Dan Campbell's then-fledgling Detroit Lions (2022)

In 2022, the woeful Bears didn't have much to be hopeful for. But at midseason, they figured out a way to parlay Justin Fields' unique dual-threat abilities as a quarterback into an electric offense. This ideal peaked during a mid-November matchup with the rival Detroit Lions, who, at the time, were struggling to find an identity at 2-6 under head coach Dan Campbell.

For most of the game, Fields was marvelous. He fired off two beautiful touchdown passes to tight end Cole Kmet and averaged over 11 yards per carry on 147 yards rushing. As a result, the Bears had a 24-10 lead entering the fourth quarter, where Fields even had this magical 67-yard touchdown run.

Then Fields threw a backbreaking pick-six to Lions cornerback Jeff Okudah, and the Lions scored 21 points in the fourth quarter to steal away the lead (and the game) in the final minutes. On the Bears' final possession, with the game on the line, Fields took not one but crushing sacks, and Chicago fell back to 3-6. The Lions, meanwhile, are a sparkling 28-10 (including playoffs) since that victory. Tough scene.

5. Bears blow 10-point fourth-quarter lead to Joe Flacco's Cleveland Browns (2023)

During the late stages of the 2023 season, the Bears' playoff hopes were slim and hanging on by a thread. But they didn't throw in the towel in a visit to Cleveland. In fact, they did everything but. For three quarters, Matt Eberflus' defense flexed its muscles on a miserable Joe Flacco, who threw three picks (including a pick-six). At the same time, Justin Fields created enough chunk plays to pad out what should have been a relaxing double-digit Bears win.

It's never that straightforward, is it?

In the fourth quarter, the Bears' defense let Flacco resuscitate the Cleveland attack. Flacco threw for 212 of his 374 total passing yards in the final stanza. With the game knotted up at 17 points apiece just before the two-minute warning, the Bears' offense went three-and-out. Then Flacco somehow set the Browns' eventual game-winning field goal up with just two passes for 65 yards on broken plays to tight end David Njoku.

In desperation on their ensuing possession, Fields launched up a prayer of Hail Mary on the Bears' last play that hit a wide-open Darnell Mooney's hands in the end zone. He dropped it.

Because, of course, he did.

4. Bears blow three-touchdown lead to Russell Wilson's winless Denver Broncos (2023)

In early 2023, the Bears got off to a disastrous 0-3 start. The hated Green Bay Packers pantsed them in the home opener. The offense was a glorified pop-gun against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Kansas City Chiefs tore them apart and turned them into the anonymous NFL team in the first public chapter of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's love story.

But the woeful Denver Broncos in Week 4? That was an opportunity. New head coach Sean Payton was grasping at straws, trying to set a foundation for Denver and the ghost of Russell Wilson. And it showed. This was the Bears' opportunity to get up off the mat in front of their home fans.

For three quarters, they played like it. Fields had four touchdown passes through a half, while a seemingly washed-up Wilson couldn't muster up a single positive play against a ravenous Chicago defense en route to a 28-7 deficit. Then the dam broke. The Bears started punting aimlessly. Eberflus' defense started blowing coverages downfield and missing tackles. Fields punctuated the chaos by fumbling the ball for a Denver defensive touchdown to unthinkably tie the game up at 28-28 late in the fourth quarter.

When the Broncos kicked a field goal for the lead in the closing minutes. Fields had a chance to rescue the Bears from themselves. He threw a game-ending pick to Kareem Jackson at midfield instead. Classic Bears.

3. Bears blow 12-point lead to Lions in final four minutes (2023)

No one thought the lowly Bears would give the heavyweight Lions all they could handle during a road visit in November 2023. To that point, Chicago's biggest claim to fame was a 20-point blowout win over Sam Howell, owner of one of the worst sack percentages by a quarterback in NFL history.

Somehow, the Bears punched the Lions in the mouth anyway. Over and over. Chicago accumulated nearly 200 team rushing yards and forced four turnovers, including three picks off Jared Goff. When the Bears used almost eight minutes over 14 plays in a late fourth-quarter drive to give themselves a 26-14 lead with just 4:15 remaining, it sure felt like they were about to knock off one of the NFC's top teams.

Then the Lions needed just 1:16 to get Jameson Williams a deep touchdown and make the Bears sweat. On their ensuing possession, the Bears responded by turtling with a cowardly three-and-out that gave the Lions 2:33, including a timeout and the two-minute warning, to go and steal away the game. They didn't waste this opening and salted away the game with a second touchdown drive of at least 70 yards in roughly two and a half minutes.

It was almost poetic that Fields ate a sack safety at the hands of Aidan Hutchinson on the Bears' last-ditch possession. Another classic Eberflus choke job.

2. Green Bay Packers block field goal after Eberflus has Caleb Williams stop playing offense (2024)

After enduring one of the worst losses in franchise history only a few weeks earlier (which may or may not be at the top of this list), the Bears finally bit the bullet and fired former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron. Under Thomas Brown's guidance as a play-caller against the Packers, Caleb Williams responded with one of the finer performances of his young career as the Bears fought for their season.

While Williams wasn't perfect by any means, he was, more or less, in complete control and even had the Bears ahead 19-14 in the fourth quarter. Then Eberflus' defense blew a coverage on a 60-yard pass to Christian Watson where no Bears defender was within five yards, allowing the receiver to get up and take Green Bay into the red zone. To no one's shock, Jordan Love eventually punched the ball in.

With just about three minutes on the clock, the Bears found themselves in a familiar position -- down one against a Packers organization that had tormented them for over three decades. But the rookie Williams was green to all of that misfortune, and he played like it after delivering three straight exceptional throws -- including a 16-yard dime to Rome Odunze on third-and-long, a perfect back-shoulder throw to Odunze on fourth down with the game in the balance, and a laser to Keenan Allen when the Packers stuffed the defensive box.

After Williams completed his pass to Allen to put the Bears in position for a game-winning field goal from Cairo Santos, Chicago weirdly didn't run another real play. Even with 35 seconds and a timeout, Eberflus claimed he was afraid his players would make a mistake after watching Williams save their bacon. He settled for a 46-yard kick -- by no means a gimme in a clutch situation -- and the Packers blocked it to pull off the unlikely win.

In essence, Williams' first taste of Bears-Packers was his own coach pulling out the rug from under him after he put on a red cape for his teammates. For the second time in a month. Fitting.

Now, about that first time ...

1. Bears surrender game-winning Hail Mary to Washington Commanders (2024)

For over three quarters, Williams' Bears had no business stealing a win on the road against Jayden Daniels' Commanders. While Chicago's defense kept bending but not breaking, the Bears couldn't muster up an ounce of competence against one of the NFL's worst defenses.

This is when we first really saw the legend of Williams.

Within a 10-minute span in the fourth quarter, the gifted young quarterback took Chicago on not one but two possible game-deciding drives. He even shook off a fumble from guard Doug Kramer on a silly play call on the first mentioned drive to take the Bears right back down the field. There was nothing the Commanders' defense could do to Williams once he started improvising and launching beautiful tight-window throws to Bears playmakers. This manifested in a late Roschon Johnson touchdown to give Chicago a 15-12 lead with 25 seconds left.

It should've been the game-winner. Eberflus had other ideas.

On the Commanders' last-ditch drive, Eberflus chose to concede a free 13 yards to Terry McLaurin that made a Daniels' throw to the end zone more feasible. Then, instead of using any of his THREE TIMEOUTS to give the Bears' defense a breath and organize everyone while emphasizing their Hail Mary responsibilities, Eberflus decided to let the chips fall as they may.

So of course second-year cornerback Tyrique Stevenson was taunting fans mid-play as Commanders receivers ran downfield for Washington's Hail Mary. Of course the Bears only rushed three defenders, giving Daniels almost 15 seconds to wait for a throw downfield as the Commanders slowly set up their Hail Mary formation. Of course Stevenson was caught sleeping as Noah Brown, the man he was responsible for, caught the game-winning touchdown after Stevenson tipped the ball (!) to him.

All of it could've been avoided if Eberflus had taken a timeout before the sequence. He proceeded to throw Bears players under the bus for his miscues, and they unsurprisingly quit on him in response. A once-promising Bears season went down the toilet as a result.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Ranking Matt Eberflus’ worst avoidable Bears losses, including 2 backbreaking Hail Marys