Bears' Clock Management Disaster Wasn't All Matt Eberflus' Fault

Before anyone clicks this story just to find out where to direct their arguing emails, let me begin in the first sentence by saying I am absolutely not excusing Matt Eberflus' outright blunder to end the Thanksgiving loss to the Detroit Lions. It was one of the most baffling things we've seen from a head coach in a long time. But the fact that they were in a situation where he could bungle things so badly in the first place was not entirely Eberflus' fault.

In fact, the issue that started the dominos falling wasn't a mistake by any person. It was an equipment malfunction.

The Bears started that final drive with all three timeouts available, but they burned one almost immediately for no immediately apparent reason. After an incompletion on the second play of the drive, Caleb Williams burned a timeout. It only became apparent after the third-down conversion what had happened — he changed out his helmet on the sidelines, pointing to a potential faulty comms system in the helmet.

Now, the obvious retort is that the Bears had a timeout left and the whole issue was that they didn't use it. How would another one have fixed that?

Well, if we're trying to figure out what could have possibly been going through Eberflus' mind, it has to be that he was trying desperately to save that final timeout for a field goal. So if he had two instead of one, he probably would have been a lot more comfortable using them as required.

Am I giving Eberflus a pass for his mistake? Obviously not — it was inexcusable, and even with only one timeout left it was obvious what needed to happen. Millions of people were simultaneously yelling at their television sets with the exact, obvious answer as to what he should have done.

But still, for Bears fans it's incredibly unfortunate that something as simple as a malfunctioning piece of equipment set the team up for that absurd level of disappointment in the first place.

But on the plus side, if this ends up being what gets Eberflus replaced, maybe that ends up being a win for Chicago anyway. After all, his shocking postgame comments should be the final straw.

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