Legendary Dallas Cowboys head coach Jimmy Johnson did not hold back Thursday when he spoke about the Chicago Bears’ dysfunctional finish against the Detroit Lions.
Bears head coach Matt Eberflus stood idly as his team botched its final drive of Thursday’s game against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field in Detroit, Mich. The Bears trailed 23-20 and were well within field goal range with under 30 seconds left in the contest.
However, the Bears’ offense was completely disorganized in the closing moments, resulting in the team using up the entire game clock on a failed pass attempt. Chicago was not even able to attempt a game-tying field goal (video here).
Johnson appeared on the FOX postgame show and laid into the Bears coach for mismanaging the game.
“In 70 years of coaching at all three levels, I’ve never seen dysfunction that cost a team an opportunity to win the game,” said Johnson. “Obviously, he’s got a rookie quarterback and different teams do it in different ways. I handled clock management and timeouts. Sometimes, the quarterback and the coach does it. Sometimes the coach has a coach in the box talking to him about clock management. But when Eberflus saw that they were off track and there was dysfunction, he should have called timeout.
“He says he wanted to communicate to the rookie quarterback to call an out route. That was never communicated. Call timeout!”
Jimmy Johnson went scorched earth and absolutely lit up Matt Eberflus at halftime of the FOX game. pic.twitter.com/mRMwIobE5N
— Josh Hill (@jdavhill) November 28, 2024
Eberflus and the Bears had a golden opportunity to upset the NFL-best Lions and salvage any shot they had at making the playoffs in Caleb Williams’ first year. Instead, Eberflus got roasted like a turkey on Thanksgiving.
