Bears Insider Makes Huge Prediction on Next Head Coach if Eberflus is Fired
The conversation around Chicago on Black Friday is centered firmly on Matt Eberflus and his future as the head coach of the Bears. For most fans, that "conversation around his future" is that he shouldn't have one. His blunder at the end of the Lions' game was inexcusable, and his attitude toward the mistake was even worse. As a bad head coach who has clearly lost the locker room, there's little incentive to let him finish out the year.
So then, even before the view shifts to who the Bears should hire to replace him this offseason, it's worth thinking about who will replace him in the short term if he's fired. The team will need an interim head coach to close out the regular season in that situation.
That's often one of the team's coordinators — which is particularly tricky this year because the Bears have already fired one.
Thomas Brown is a name getting a lot of traction, as he's already been outstanding since taking over for Shane Waldron. But one Bears insider went on record on Friday morning saying he finds it "hard to believe" that Brown would get a shot at the interim head coach job. And his reasoning makes a lot of sense.
The Bears' top priority for the rest of the year needs to be positioning this team for future success in 2025 and beyond. That begins with developing Caleb Williams and building chemistry in this offense — which underperformed horribly to start the year but is finally rounding into form.
And messing with the success that Brown has brought on would be a seriously risky move. He's transformed this offense in just three weeks, and Caleb Williams has played three of the best games of his young career.
Splitting Brown's focus between the offense and running the rest of the team as an interim head coach would necessarily mean less attention being paid on Wililams' development, and that's not something that can really be on the table at this point.
That means Bears fans could expect it to more realistically be defensive coordinator Eric Washington or special teams coordinator Richard Hightower to be in consideration for the interim gig. Regardless of who gets it, though, it seems clear that the Bears' next long-term head coach hiring will be coming from outside the organization.
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