Eberflus proud of Bears defense, addresses his questionable challenges |
HOUSTON, T.X. - There was a lot of hope coming into the season for the Chicago Bears. A new quarterback, new coordinators, new receivers, new offensive linemen. The offense was supposed to be better.
As Sunday’s primetime 19-13 loss against the Houston Texans showed, it is not. “Obviously, we’re all disappointed in the loss, and we should be. But, I told the guys in there that in the NFL, it’s how you respond that matters, and you don’t have a lot of time to do that,” head coach Matt Eberflus said. “This is going to hurt for 24 hours, and then, we need to look at the tape on the plane, look at it (Monday) when we come in a little bit later and get with your coach and get with the meetings and make sure that we make the corrections needed to win a football game.” Through the first two games of the season, Chicago’s offense is second-to-last in the league in total yards, while the passing offense is last. The rushing offense is No. 28 in the league in total yards and No. 29 in the league in yards per attempt. However, even those numbers are skewed, given rookie quarterback Caleb Williams currently leads the team in rushing with 59 yards. Even with the offense's statistical weakness through the first two weeks, Eberflus is proud of how his team fought to the end against Houston. “What I was most proud of was that the guys fought all the way till the end, and we had ourselves a chance to win the game to the last possession,” Eberflus said. “I was also proud of the defense. The defense played well, had some big chunk plays in the first half. It’s too bad we gave up the second and 24, really good play designed by them, and we had them where we wanted them there, and they got out of that one. And then the fumble at the very end, giving us a chance to win it at the very end, those third down stops. The way they played in the second half, I think was really good as well.” Chicago’s defense has proved through the first two weeks they are one of the best defenses in the league. They have the fourth-most takeaways of any team in the league thus far and only allowed 19 points to a team loaded with talent with three elite receivers, the reigning Offensive Rookie of the Year, and a Pro Bowl running back. The defense did everything they could do to win the game for the Bears, but the offense could not get in the end zone in the second half. During their final drive, they were also short on timeouts. The Bears had two highly questionable challenges - one in the first half and one in the second. In the first half, Chicago challenged whether four-time Pro-Bowler Stefon Diggs caught a 21-yard pass in bounds on a third and ten play. Diggs clearly had both feet in bounds, making the challenge incredibly bizarre. The second challenge came in the second half when cornerback Kyler Gordon looked like he might have had one of the best interceptions of the season. However, during replay, it was incredibly obvious the play hit the ground; nonetheless, Chicago elected to challenge and lost their first timeout of the half, which they could have used on that final drive. Despite the bizarreness of both challenges, Eberflus defended the Bears’ process for going about challenging a play. “We have a good process for that. So, it’s a little bit different when you can’t see the monitor right away, and it’s a critical play like a third down or a takeaway. So, we do put a little more weight on those, but we have a great process,” Eberflus said. “We’ve been pretty clean overall since we’ve been here, and again, those were just situations where we didn’t get a great look at it, and there were critical downs, and so, we made a decision to do it, and it didn’t work out that time.” The Bears will need to step up on offense in their next game against the Indianapolis Colts (Noon/CBS), who are coming off their second loss of the season after losing 16-10 against the Jordan Love-less Green Bay Packers.
