Matt Eberflus, Shane Waldron need to improve Bears' in-game coaching

The Chicago Bears had plenty go wrong in their 21-16 loss to the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Despite facing one of the worst run defenses in the NFL, the offense only rushed for 63 total yards. Caleb Williams did throw for 363 yards and two touchdowns, but he was also intercepted twice and sacked four times, including a strip-sack fumble.

Defensively, the Bears allowed their highest point total of the year and let Jonathan Taylor run for 110 yards and two touchdowns on 23 attempts.

On special teams, Cairo Santos was short on a 56-yard field goal, and Daniel Hardy committed a neutral zone infraction on a Colts’ punt attempt, which extended Indianapolis’ drive that led to a Trey Sermon rushing touchdown.

On top of all that, head coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron also failed the offense. That tandem must be better with their in-game coaching to avoid the mistakes that happened against the Colts.

It starts with Waldron and how he utilizes personnel packages. The fourth-and-1 speed option to D’Andre Swift out of the pistol formation deserved plenty of criticism, but the previous three plays inside the Colts’ 4-yard line were also alarming on the 16-play drive that ended in a turnover on downs.

On each of the three plays, the Bears lined up in the shotgun and went with 11 personnel. Waldron decided to have DeAndre Carter, a 5-foot-8, 190-pound receiver, line up in a condensed split to help run block on those first three goal-line plays.

Here is Carter on the third-and-goal play at the Colts’ 1-yard line.

Matt Eberflus on DeAndre Carter being matched up against Tyquan Lewis on this 3rd & goal play:

"Shane (Waldron) and I watched the tape at 6:30 this morning and we talked that through. That's gotta be a better call and a better matchup there." pic.twitter.com/cGmpQSrA2N

— Adam Hoge (@AdamHoge) September 23, 2024

Eberflus admitted during his Monday press conference that it’s “gotta be a better call and a better matchup there.” And a better matchup would’ve been to have gone heavy at the goal line with 12 or 13 personnel, but Waldron didn’t elect to do that until the option play on fourth down.

Cole Kmet, who was on the field for all four plays, was asked about the personnel usage near the goal line and whether more tight ends could have been used.

“I mean, you could,” Kmet said. “This is definitely more of a question for the coaching staff as to what their thought processes are going into that stuff. You see looks throughout the week and on film that you think you can take advantage of in certain personnels. But you have to give them credit. They handled it well and we just weren’t getting off at the point of attack to get those in the end zone. It’s always important as player to look inward and see what you could have done better on those types of plays and improve from that standpoint. But in terms of all the logistics and what you’re asking, Nick, I think that’s something you’d have to ask the coaches about.”

It’s incredible that Carter was in for those three plays instead of Marcedes Lewis or Gerald Everett, but clearly, the obvious things didn’t register for Waldron. Still, the Bears had one last down to make up for squandering away the first three plays.

But even after the team saw that Colts were lined up in a different defensive look than what they had practiced the speed option against, Williams and the offense still ran the play. Williams felt like he couldn’t check out of the speed option because he didn’t have enough time after he broke the huddle, but the Bears still had all three timeouts and could’ve used one of them to make the proper correction.

Instead, it appeared, Eberflus allowed his rookie quarterback to learn on the spot.

“Yeah, you want to be able to let him operate, too,” Eberflus said. “We thought at 10, he could potentially be checking it, and he snapped it at 5. That’s an operation we have to do better together. That’s an everybody thing and we have to do it better.”

Eberflus also didn’t have his team prepared on what should’ve been an obvious decision later in the game.

After Williams found an open Rome Odunze in the end zone for the Bears’ first touchdown of the day against the Colts with just over eight minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, Chicago was forced to take a timeout.

The Bears weren’t prepared to go for the two-point conversion with the team down 14-9 at the time.

“That was just not good — like I said, we need to be better there as coaches, communicating across the board to be able to go for it, that we are going for it, going for two, because we’re down by 5,” Eberflus said. “Obviously that’s the No. 1 thing you do. When I saw it wasn’t, I called a timeout to make sure we got the guys ready and got them alerted, and got the best play we had for that particular situation. Again, that’s gotta be better. We have been great at that. We just have to be better in that moment.”

The Bears have plenty of issues they need to correct on the offense, and right now the coaching staff isn’t making things easier. Not only do the players need to go back on working on fundamentals and communication, but apparently the coaching staff needs to do the same.