He did not take the North.
The stat that has defined Matt Eberflus’s mercifully ended Bears coaching tenure is his 5-19 record in one-score games, the worst mark in NFL history among coaches with at least 20 such games. Four of those losses came in this six-game losing streak, with three destined to go down in Bears history as among our most gut-wrenching: The Tyrique Stevenson Hail Mary Game, The Blocked Field Goal Game, The Unused Timeout Game.
That 5-19 stat tells the story of Matt Eberflus’s time here and shows his place in NFL history.
The middle of those three games overlaps with another horrible Eberflus stat, because when Green Bay blocked Cairo Santos’s would-be game-winner, Eberflus fell to 0-5 against the Packers. His firing on Black Friday locks in his ignominy, making him the only coach in Bears history to never beat the Packers.
I had to check that to make sure, doing so when our old friend and now DBB Editor in Chief Robert Schmitz asked me and Jeff Berckes to verify that chilling suspicion. Sure enough, it checked out. The Bears and Packers have linked up 209 times, including two playoff games, with 16 Bears head coaches (counting co-coaches Hunk Anderson and Luke Johnsos as one) roaming the sidelines.
And while four Bears head coaches won only one game against Green Bay, they at least got the one, no matter the circumstances.
The gory details, with Bears head coaches in order of wins vs. the Packers (checked via Pro Football Reference):
- George Halas: 43-30-4
- Mike Ditka: 15-5
- Lovie Smith: 8-11
- Jack Pardee: 5-1
- Hunk Anderson / Luke Johnsos: 4-2-1
- Neill Armstrong: 4-4
- Paddy Driscoll: 3-1
- Ralph Jones: 3-5-1
- Abe Gibron: 2-4
- Jim Dooley: 2-6
- Dick Jauron: 2-8
- Marc Trestman: 1-3
- John Fox: 1-5
- Matt Nagy: 1-7
- Dave Wannstedt: 1-11
- MATT EBERFLUS: 0-5
Breaking out George Halas’s four stints as head coach:
- 1920-1929: 7-6-3
- 1933-1942: 14-7
- 1946-1955: 15-4-1
- 1958-1967: 7-13
Looking at the one-win coaches:
- WANNSTEDT 1993: Bears win 30-17 in one of my favorite games ever, the “3D” game in which all three of our touchdowns came on defense. I wrote about that game, and its star Dante Jones, in 2021. This was Wannstedt’s first year as Bears head coach; the team would lose the final 10 Packers games of his tenure.
- TRESTMAN 2013: Bears win 27-20 in a battle of the backup QBs. Josh McCown started in place of Jay Cutler, and Aaron Rodgers broke his collarbone on the first series, with Seneca Wallace filling in.
- FOX 2015: Bears win 17-13 on Thanksgiving, spoiling Brett Favre’s jersey retirement, returning the favor holiday for holiday 21 years after the Packers crushed us on Halloween, the day that the team retired the numbers of Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers.
- NAGY 2018: Bears win 24-17 to clinch the NFC North. Incredibly, this win came against Packers interim head coach Joe Philbin, meaning the Bears have not defeated a full-time Packers head coach since 2015.
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