UA-59049186-1 Welcome to Chicago: Matt Eberflus, Head Coach - Good if it Goes

Welcome to Chicago: Matt Eberflus, Head Coach

You’re the man now, dog. [Photo: Getty]

Thursday, the Chicago Bears hired Indianapolis Colts defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus to be the 17th head coach in franchise history. Word is that Halas Hall was split between Jim Caldwell and Dan Quinn and new GM Ryan Poles went his own way and hired Eberflus, so apparently George and company were serious when they said the new GM was truly running the show on the football side.

Eberflus played college football at Toledo before transitioning into a coaching role at his alma mater. Over the next nine years, he held multiple positions with the Rockets on the defensive side of the ball before heading to Mizzou to become their defensive coordinator. After eight years in Columbia, Eberflus took his talents to the NFL, hiring on as the Browns’ linebackers coach. He would spent two years there before following Rob Ryan to Dallas in 2011. The man known as Coach Flus spent the next seven years there as the linebackers coach, the last two with the title of passing game coordinator added on. In 2018, he headed up north to serve as DC for the Colts, a position he held until Thursday.

We’ll get more into the X’s and O’s here in the coming days; the short version is Eberflus employs a 4-3 Tampa-2 scheme (the transition costs shouldn’t be very high, more on that later) and has worked not only under Rob Ryan, but also Monte Kiffin and Rod Marinelli, the latter of whom Peanut Tillman and Lance Briggs have already begun lobbying for on Twitter to become the new DC. Everyone else has already highlighted the Lovie Smith parallels; this space doesn’t need to do so. It looks Sean Desai is probably out, unless Eberflus would want to keep him on to coach safeties again. Word is that the team is targeting Rich Bisaccia as special teams coach should he not get the Raiders head coaching job, which, yes, please. The million-dollar question, of course, is who’s going to be the offensive coordinator. The only name your author has seen mentioned thus far is Eagles passing game coordinator Kevin Patullo. Bears insider Adam Hoge put out a list of potential candidates; if your author had his druthers, it would be Mike McDaniel.

I’ll leave you with Eberflus’ history as a defensive coordinator. The rows with the team name in team colors are the years he was with the team. The rows in black and white are years before or after Eberflus got there.

Twitter: @KSchroeder_312

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