It took George McCaskey, Kevin Warren and Ryan Poles 32 seconds of national embarrassment to finally admit what everyone else already knew.

And even when the Chicago Bears brain trust decided that they could no longer justify keeping Matt Eberflus as their team’s head coach, they still waited until he held another press conference and told us that everything was fine and he San Francisco 49ers prepared for next week’s game against the Chicago Bears – before they actually pulled the trigger.

Remember, this is an operation worth an estimated $6.4 billion, not a local hardware company trying to decide whether to fire a salesman for putting the wing nuts and bolts in the in the wrong gear.

Fittingly, the Bears were the Bears until the last drop.

“It was a normal process,” Eberflus said on a Zoom call with reporters Friday morning before being Zoomed out of the NFL.

The sad thing is that the Bears actually believe this is a normal operation, when it’s quite obvious that they are the laughing stock of football. Who else would allow Eberflus to fail again and again after repeatedly proving that he is not suitable for the job? His .304 winning percentage was the third-worst in Bears history, ahead of only John Fox (.292) and Abe Gibron (.274).

And at least Abe had Melody to distract us from all the losses. (Google it, kids.)

Eberflus’ days were numbered since Hail Mary’s defeat by the Washington Commanders. The 19-3 loss to the underwhelming New England Patriots on November 10, in which he and his team were booed off the field, would have been the perfect time to say sayonara. The Bears had eight games left to try and salvage the season, and at 4-5, there was still hope that they could.

But no, the McCaskeys don’t fire head coaches during the season, we’ve been told a thousand times. Instead, they got rid of the victim, offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, who was replaced by Thomas Brown. Fans had to endure three more brutal endings before George McCaskey finally came to the conclusion that this marriage wasn’t going to work.

The clock blunder on Thanksgiving Day will, of course, be remembered as the fatal blow, as we all watched in a collective daze as the clock ticked down and Caleb Williams kept barking signals, seemingly unaware that the game was about to end . Even your Aunt Martha, who can’t tell a soccer ball from a drumstick, yelled, “What’s he doing screaming so loud?”

It was an unforgettable Thanksgiving with everyone in the living room calling for Eberflus’ head. Then came Friday morning’s “Everything’s OK” press conference, which made it seem like the Bears were actually trying to fire up their fans.

I’m not sure what motivated McCaskey to change longstanding policies – be it Jimmy Johnson’s rant or a tweet from The Wieners Circle – but whoever it was should receive a Medal of Valor for saving the city from a mass collapse receive .

We all saw this coming, except maybe the three amigos: McCaskey, Warren and Poles. That still doesn’t make it any more palatable.

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The Thanksgiving hangover firing represents the most famous “hiring process” in Bears history, as Mike McCaskey told the media that Dave McGinnis would be the head coach before actually informing McGinnis, leaving both the coach and the rest lost to his own waning credibility. This embarrassing moment would be the highlight of Mike McCaskey’s career, just as it will be remembered as George’s most unspectacular moment.

How will Eberflus be remembered? Was he a poor man’s Pedro Grifol or a poorer man’s Jim Boylen?

Until Thursday’s debacle, perhaps the moment that best embodied the Eberflus era came during a lopsided loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in October 2023, when he threw the red challenge flag after the Bears scored a meaningless touchdown late in the game achieved. He wanted to throw it before the game, but Eberflus was never the type to react quickly to any situation. And since there was no video recording of the actual touchdown, it was no harm, no foul.

What comes next for Bears fans is the hard part.

Do they trust these leaders to hire the right replacement? They trust Mayor Brandon Johnson to manage the city budget almost as much.

The easiest solution is to throw money at Bill Belichick and see if he bites. If Williams truly is a game-changing quarterback, then it makes sense to hand the keys to the man who coached the greatest quarterback of his generation.

But making sense isn’t really the Bears’ thing, so expect them to go with someone they don’t need to give real power to and who will be more boring than their last five coaches combined. Someone disposable by 2027.

It’s normal operating procedure at Halas Hall.