Matt Eberflus defends decision-making despite Cairo Santos' hash mark preference

LAKE FOREST, Ill. – It’s not just that the Bears lost to the Packers for the 11th consecutive time dating back to 2019; it’s how it happened, and how Matt Eberflus’ Bears continue to find strange, yet avoidable ways to lose.

Eberflus offered a quieter tone on Wednesday at Halas Hall and a readiness for the conversation to shift from last Sunday’s backbreaking loss to the Packers to preparation for the Vikings this upcoming Sunday.

While the line of questioning mostly looked ahead to Sunday against Minnesota, one from CHGO Sports’ Nicholas Moreano rehashed the failed game-winning field goal attempt and opened a new can of worms for the Chicago Bears head coach.

On the play to set up the final kick, Roschon Johnson was intentionally run to the left hash mark instead of the right, where kicker Cairo Santos sets up his point-after tries. When asked if there was a conversation or a thought to move the ball to the right, Eberflus said, “There was not, we feel good with our decision there.”

Santos later confirmed to the Chicago Tribune that his preference is to kick from the right, but acknowledged that he should’ve made the kick regardless.

However, the hash didn’t change Santos’ kick trajectory. Instead, it was the conscious decision to not attempt to get the ball closer with 35 seconds left on the clock that even left members of the Packers surprised.

Linebacker Edgerrin Cooper told ESPN, “When a kicker is farther back, he has to kick it lower to have a good angle to get off. So if he’s a little bit closer, he could kick it straight up and be fine.”

After the game on Sunday, Eberflus defended his decision to play the situation conservatively. “They were loading the box there. You could say you could do that for sure, maybe get a couple more yards, but you’re also going to risk fumbling and different things there.” Eberflus added, “I felt very confident where we were at that time.”

The head coach doubled down on Monday, making a case for his thought process. “The obvious risks are, they stammer, you false start you go backwards, you look at all that, all that. You run an outside play and they call holding. You throw a pass and it gets tipped, whatever it is.

“If you feel good about your decision there and the wind conditions and what the conditions are at that point and where you are in the field. You feel good about it, you take it down and then you kick it and we felt good about it.”

Eberflus, when asked if his process would be identical given another chance, said, “I would do the same. I mean, would you like to be closer? Sure, you’d like it to be at the 15-yard line. It is where it is.”

Sound familiar? In 2019 after a loss to the Chargers, former head coach Matt Nagy found himself in an almost identical situation defending his decision to drain the clock instead of attempting to shorten the field ahead of a missed game-winner.

“I had zero thought of running the ball,” said Nagy after kicker Eddy Pineiro missed a 41-yard attempt as time expired on a 17-16 loss. “I’m not taking the chance of fumbling the football. They know you’re running the football, so you lose 3 or 4 yards. So that wasn’t even in our process as coaches to think about that.”

On first down with one timeout from the Chargers’ 22-yard line, Nagy instructed quarterback Mitchell Trubisky to receive the snap and kneel on the left hash mark to set up Pineiro, draining :39 from the clock before Nagy called a timeout with :04 left.

The problem? Pineiro preferred the right hash to the left.

“It’s just the aiming points,” Pineiro said the following week. “I mean the left hash is going to be a different kick than the right hash. And it’s going to be a different kick in the middle.”

When asked if Pineiro had communicated his preference, Nagy said, “We have a communication process that we used, and we felt very comfortable in that situation with what we did.”

The former head coach continued, “The communication between all of us was that from 41 yards he was going to make that kick. And he didn’t. And we understand that. And he feels as bad as anybody. Whether it’s on the right hash, the middle or the left hash, he wants to make it and he didn’t.”

Nagy continued to defend the decision throughout the week. “At that point in time, where we were, everything included, we felt really good about Eddy, in a lot of ways, making that kick. That’s what I said at the beginning. With us feeling that good about everything, he missed the kick.

The similarity is almost jarring.

The conservative pattern of Bears head coaches doesn’t end with Nagy, either.

More importantly, for a team and culture that Eberflus has built on the principle of exemplary communication, why is the kicker’s hash preference not considered ahead of a critical attempt?

With the season on the line, Eberflus took the conservative route, and his decision-making could have Chicago on an aggressive route to replacing that thought process after three losing seasons since Eberflus’ hiring.

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