Doubltful. There were reports after the game last night that Warren was lingering in the locker room talking to Poles, Brown and players. Speculative, but the sense is that the writing was on the wall as that’s atypical behavior from him.
Also the meeting with Warren and Poles this afternoon was scheduled and mentioned in the presser. So it was on the calendar. They let him go out there as normally scheduled.
I agree with @Omniscient : if they hadn’t already decided to fire Eberflus prior to yesterday’s game, I think that the poor coaching at the end, followed by his seeming unwillingness to admit that they had done anything wrong during his post-game press conference, undoubtedly sealed it. The die had been cast before they left Detroit.
I assume Poles has to up next against the wall.
I had to go back and watch the whole final sequence, since I missed that whole game driving from Anaheim to San Jose.
Holy crap on a cracker, how do you let the clock run out when you have a time out left? And that was only the final stoopid thing. (Bad DPI call on that 4th down, but I’m OK with it since it let us see what came after.)
Chiefs figure out yet another way to win a game. A game, once again, that they clearly should have lost.
They are now 11-1. Another one-score game that came down to the last play. 14 straight wins in one-score games.
The Chiefs keep winning, so I guess it’s ok, but man do they look vulnerable. Whoever ends up as the top wild card (probably Steelers, Ravens, or Chargers) may have decent chances - beating Houston and then KC doesn’t seem impossible.
Of 221 eligible coaches with 20+ games coached, that have lost games by seven points or less, Matt Eberflus ranks dead last at 5-19.
I’ve seen this stat a bunch. I’m surprised by 2 things. One that Eberflus’s record isn’t worse. And that no one else has a worse winning percentage. We’ve seen a lot of bad coaches and I would think that 5-19 would be a pretty typical mark for a run of the mill bad coach.
In other news, another original way to blow a late game situation from the Raiders. Never a dull moment. The script writers are putting in work this year.
Not impossible but the Chiefs have a pretty tough run in, with the way the chiefs are playing it is very likely they are not the number one seed. I would be very surprised in KC win out though the Bills are likely to lose in Detroit.
Of course if another WC team gets through the top WC could still play KC if they are seeded 2.
The end of the Chiefs-Raiders game was as or more comical than the Lions-Bears. The Raiders missed a FG to take the lead; got the ball back with time and got into FG position again. Only to have one of the most inept-looking plays I have seen in years as the snap hit O’Connell in the chest while he was looking away. No less than three Raiders gamely took the blame for that play though, so give them credit for accountability.
I’m not sure I even understood what happened there. Raiders downed the ball to stop the clock. IIRC there was about 20 seconds left on the clock. I thought they were going to kick a field goal to win the game. Why did they line up for another play?
Two reasons. First they wanted a closer field goal - their kicker had already missed three long ones. Second teams are so terrified of Mahomes with even 15 seconds left that they wanted zeros on the clock after the kick.
I still think it was a mistake and probably would have kicked it then. So much bad can happen trying to run a play with no timeouts left.
I’m wondering what all the records are in close games (7 points or less.) I wouldn’t be shocked if they were biased toward 50% more strongly than records in all games. Something about close games being a literal statistical tossup (just a supposition) making his 5-19 way outside standard deviation.
Just spitballing possible explanations, because my gut reaction is similar to yours: 5-19 doesn’t strike me as unusually bad for a bad coach. I wonder, for example, what Robert Saleh’s record was in close games with the Jets? Eyeballing manually I’m counting 13-16 (.448) in close games compared to his overall record of 20-36 (.357), so he gets a decent amount better / closer to 50% when only looking at close games.
Looking again at Eberflus, he was 5-19 (.208) in close games compared to 14-32 (.304) overall, so he actually got substantially worse / further from 50% in close games. I’m betting that’s rather unusual.
One thing I noticed going through the Jets games was that as a bad team, most of their wins counted because they rarely won big, while many/most of their losses didn’t count because they got blown out. So that drives the number closer to 50% from both sides for a bad team. And it’s not crazy to imagine that a good team would lose credit for a bunch of dominating wins and get penalized for rarely getting blown out.
I’d bet a dollar (just an expression) that Eberflus is not just last but a huge outlier in close games (.208!), but at very least I’d be curious to see full stats.
I’m at a hotel breakfast buffet. The TV is tuned to The Weather Channel, teaching viewers about “lake effect snow.” I knew what that is already, but it’s funny to hear how earnestly they’re describing it. Sunday night could be one of those fun weather games.
Just looked at the forecast for Buffalo. New snow accumulation of 10 to 14 inches today and 3 to 7 inches tomorrow.
Fun indeed.
Lions have two more defensive players out for the season after the Thanksgiving game. I know every team gets injuries, but it’s insane how almost all of ours are on defense. We have 13 defensive players on IR and two more almost certainly out against Green Bay and one more questionable against them.
Your reasoning sounds correct to me. I bet Hugh Jackson, Marc Trestman, Frank Reich, Matt Patricia, Rod Marinelli and Rich Kotite fare better in close games than overall.
I went back and did the math for Marc Trestman’s two seasons, and John Fox’s three seasons, as the Bears’ head coaches.
Trestman was 13-19 (.406) overall; in games decided by 7 points or less, he was 6-8 (.429). So, a smidge better in close games.
Fox was 14-34 (.292) overall, but in close games, he was 8-17 (.320). Again, a bit better in close games.
You still may have been half right.
Hard to know what to believe at this point, lots of news stories and “insider” reports.
This postgame message required a different tone, a different vibe, and probably a different voice. Like a lot of Bears players, Johnson had had enough. Sick of finding new ways to give games away, they wanted accountability and answers.
“Jaylon went crazy,” one Bears player said. “He was very emotional and pissed but rightfully so. He’s been here longer than most.”
Said another player: “He was going off more so at (Eberflus).”
The basic story at this point is that Warren and George wanted to fire Eberflus at the end of last season. Poles went to bat for him and argued to keep him. Then when the wheels started coming off, first against Washington and then against New England, Poles had seen enough and was ready to reverse course and can him. Ownership stepped in. But then the locker room had a complete meltdown in Detroit so ownership relented and Poles got his wish.
Also, the story seems to go that Warren, George and Poles were in an executive meeting discussing Eberflus’s future at 9AM when his press conference was scheduled to happen. The team didn’t send out the Zoom link until 9:05, which they usually do 1-2 hours before the presser. It seems like the PR people knew that a firing might be happening and wanted to save Flus the indignity but they didn’t get word in time and had to get started. It’s unclear when the executive meeting started. It should have started at like 6AM so it was done before the scheduled press event, or they should have postponed the press event under the guise of a holiday adjustment or something. Whatever the case, not a well run process. Warren probably refused to reschedule is fucking prayer rituals.
Agreed, and I think that that seems to be part of the Bears’ front-office issue, for at least as long as I’ve been living in the area. It seems like they don’t have one single person with ultimate authority, and they have always struggled with internal communications. (Remember the misfire on the Dave McGinnis “hired” / “not hired” press conferences?)
In the case of yesterday, if their meeting wasn’t going to be completed before Eberflus’s scheduled press call, Poles should have told the PR staff to issue a “call is delayed” message to the press. Speculation was already rampant anyway at that point, and it’d look less bad than making the coach go out and talk to the press, when you were already pretty sure you were about to fire him.