Details from the “ugly” Bears locker room after the brutal loss to the Lions

Details from the “ugly” Bears locker room after the brutal loss to the Lions

The Chicago Bears fired head coach Matt Eberflus on Friday after suffering a disastrous loss to the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving, where more coaching errors led to the team’s sixth straight loss. But what exactly led to Eberflus’ dismissal on Friday?

According to Adam Jahns of The Athletic, an employee said the scene in the locker room after Thursday’s loss was “ugly” and “there was a lot of screaming.” But there was one particular player who was fed up: star cornerback Jaylon Johnson, who has never had a winning season since being signed by Chicago in 2020.

“Jaylon has gone crazy,” a Bears player told Jahns. “He was very emotional and angry, but rightly so. He’s been here longer than most.”

Another player added: “It went even better at (Eberflus).”

The defining moment of the Eberflus era came at the end of the Lions game, when his failure to call a timeout in a critical situation with Caleb Williams and the offense resulted in a brutal defeat on national television. To make matters worse, Eberflus defended his decision by not calling a timeout as 30 seconds had expired and the game ended with a complete incompletion.

It was Eberflus’ decision not to call a timeout that left the players fuming after the game.

“The boys were angry,” an employee told Jahns. “It’s been a buildup this season.”

But this was far from the first mistake Eberflus has made that resulted in a loss – heck, it’s the third in this six-game losing streak alone.

“We felt as players that we fought our way back into games to lose too many times due to poor time management and poor decision making,” one player told Jahns.

According to Jahns, the tensions were so great that Eberflus had to leave the locker room after addressing the team.

Multiple sources added that emotions between the players and their head coach were so high that Eberflus left the locker room immediately after his speech and exchange with the players. There was nothing left to say. It was a moment for this Bears team that would inevitably force chairman George McCaskey to do something the franchise had never done before.

The Bears had never fired a head coach midseason before, but Eberflus essentially forced him to do so after that brutal scene in the postgame locker room. It was impossible for Eberflus to be able to referee another game after this last fiasco in which he completely, 100 percent, lost the locker room.

This article originally appeared on Bears Wire: Details from the ‘ugly’ Bears’ locker room after brutal loss to the Lions

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