The Lions can’t afford to play this poorly on bigger fields

The best thing the Lions can do is chalk this up as a win. They still have just one loss this season, and in the second week they only lost by four points.

Six of their last eight wins have come by double-digit margins, and this one seemed to be on its way as they dominated the Bears in the first half. The play wasn’t great, they couldn’t finish drives, and in the first half they committed a brutal turnover in the red zone that kept Chicago alive.

In other words, they almost blew it. But they didn’t. They survived and won their first Thanksgiving game since 2016.

This is important because they won’t always be beautiful. You have to learn to weather storms and you have to learn from duds. The fact that they probably delivered a dud on Thursday and still got the W is promising.

However, they will need to put in a better performance if they want to extend that winning streak next Thursday against the Packers and/or in Week 15 against the Bills, and they can’t afford another performance like that in January.

Is this all for Bears head coach Matt Eberflus?

The Bears are now 4-8, but four of those losses have come by a total of 10 points during their current six-game losing streak.

In one case, they were embarrassingly unprepared for a Hail Mary attempt. In another instance, poor special teams performance cost them the win. And in this case, unforgivably poor time management in the final 30 seconds cost them a legitimate chance to at least take a superior opponent into overtime on a short away break.

Wins at any of these spots could have saved their season. The same goes for the overtime loss to the Vikings in Week 12. And yet they have now lost eight of their last 10 games by one point.

This could be the final straw for Eberflus, who remains employed despite two offensive coordinators being scapegoated in the last ten months. At some point it has to fall on him. And while Caleb Williams takes plenty of blame for the chaos that led to them leaving a timeout in the pocket as time expired when the Detroit offense was in field goal range, Eberflus is the man is responsible for preparing this young team for situations like this.

At this point, the Bears will probably win fewer games this year than they did in 2023. I don’t know how Eberflus will survive that.