3 overreactions to Bears loss in Week 3: Is Matt Eberflus the right man for the job?

There's nothing worse than losing a game you should have won. The Tennessee Titans felt that after Week 1 when they let the defense of the Chicago Bears steal the game from them. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, as the Bears repeatedly sabotaged themselves in a frustrating Week 3 loss to the Indianapolis Colts.

This is the kind of game that's just tailor-made (not to be confused with Jonathan Taylor, whose running ultimately proved to be the difference) for overreactions. With that in mind, get ready, because we're coming in hotter than a big scoop of giardiniera on a deep dish pizza.

Bears overreaction 1: Matt Eberflus is not the right man for the job

Matt Eberflus seems like a good dude. He also knows how to coach a defense. I'm not sure either of those qualities is enough to make him a good head coach, though.

Few figures throughout history have ever gotten as much mileage out of a single quote than Bill Parcells has with, "You are what your record says you are." It's brilliant because fighting against it is futile. If your record is bad, that's because you yourself are bad. Need more time? Come back and see me when your record is good and let it speak for itself. Until then, you're out of luck. It's the thinking man's way of pointing up and saying, "Scoreboard" to a losing opponent.

Matt Eberflus deserves a lot of credit for turning the Bears around in the second half of last year, but through three weeks he's done little to beat the allegations that he is what his record says he is. At 11-26, that's not good.

Eberflus' defense is great, but that's not enough to be a successful head coach. He's looked out of his depth when it comes to making the moment-to-moment decisions that can decide a game, like his two awful challenges against the Texans, or his decision to kick it deep with 2:01 left against the Colts after the Bears had cut the deficit to five.

Let's talk about that decision because it was mind-boggling when it happened and my mind is no less boggled as I think about it now. The Bears had just one timeout remaining, plus the two-minute warning. In a best-case scenario, Montez Sweat and company would get three straight stops and get the ball back with just over a minute to go and no timeouts. That's a difficult scenario to put your rookie quarterback in, but it was the only one in which he'd even have a chance.

Cairo Santos is an accurate kicker, but let's just say that power is not his strength. This isn't a criticism of him, because to be fair, he's made four out of five kicks from 50+ this season, but as kickers around the league are making 60-yarders look easy, Santos is doing all he can to sneak his long ones through. One of those makes against the Texans hit the camera just above the crossbar, and his lone miss of the season came on the first Bears drive against the Colts, a 56-yarder that fell short.

The Bears rank 30th in the league in touchback percentage on kickoffs, so what made Matt Eberflus think that Santos could boot the ball through the end zone and preserve the two-minute warning? That's just not something he's capable of doing, even in a dome with perfect conditions. Thankfully for Eberflus, the Colts were asleep at the wheel, because their coaching staff didn't instruct kick returner Anthony Gould to take the ball out of the end zone, which effectively gifted the Bears an extra timeout.

If the Colts knew what they were doing, the Bears would have needed a three-and-out just to get the ball back with no timeouts and about 30 seconds left. That was a conscious decision that Eberflus made instead of onside kicking. Predictably, the Bears never saw the ball again after Jonathan Taylor picked up a first down.

The NFC North is hell right now because it's filled with quality coaches. Dan Campbell has turned the Lions of all teams into Super Bowl contenders. Matt LaFleur lost Jordan Love at the end of Week 1 and said, "No big deal," since then as he's turned Malik Willis into a competent quarterback for the Packers' next two games. Those games were against the Titans and Colts, two teams the Bears have now also faced. The Packers went 2-0 in those games with a plus-22 scoring margin, while the Bears went 1-1 with a plus-2 margin. Speaking of scoring margin, let's not forget Kevin O'Connell, who has his Sam Darnold-led Vikings atop the NFC at 3-0 while outscoring their opponent by 55 points. That includes a 34-7 thrashing of the same Texans team that just beat the Bears in Week 2.

Eberflus' lack of command was never more apparent than after Caleb Williams hit Rome Odunze for the pair's first-ever touchdown to cut the lead to five in the fourth quarter. Eberflus needed to be halfway onto the field shouting for a two-point conversion, but instead, the Bears had to waste a critical timeout after they inexplicably sent Cairo Santos onto the field for a meaningless extra point.

It's too early in the season for Ryan Poles to have his finger on the eject button, but at some point, Eberflus' record is going to become impossible to ignore. You can't really argue with a straight face that Eberflus is anything but the fourth-best coach in the division right now, and if the Bears are serious about turning around decades of mediocrity and becoming an elite franchise once again, they're going to have to admit that and turn the page.

Bears overreaction 2: The cast of The Bear would do a better job at blocking than the Bears offensive line

You know that part in Old School where Will Ferrell goes streaking? That's what I think of when I watch this Bears offensive line. Nobody wants to see Will Ferrell naked, and nobody wants to see this O-line get manhandled by an opposing defense, but for some reason, I just can't look away.

The Bears were unable to block anyone through the first two weeks of the season, but the line's performance in Indianapolis was the most damning indictment of Chris Morgan's unit yet. Against a Colts team that had allowed 474 yards rushing (!) in its first two games and was playing without star defensive tackle DeForest Buckner, the Bears managed only 63 yards on 28 attempts for a piddly 2.3 yards per rush.

I can hit you over the head with stats that paint the O-line in an unflattering light, but a picture is worth a thousand words. What's the opposite of "Hang it in the Louvre?"

My kids' daycare used to send photos home every day, and that was the last time I remember seeing such a good group nap photo. Seriously, what is happening here? This was from the Bears' ill-fated decision to go for it on 4th-and-goal from the 1 late in the first half with, of all things, a speed option. The entire line got eaten by the turf monster and the play resulted in an embarrassing loss of 12. All that's left is for my favorite X account, ArtButMakeItSports, to turn it into his latest comparative masterpiece.

My radical take is that we let the cast of The Bear play offensive line instead because it couldn't be worse than this. Jeremy Allen White is the center of attention as Carmy, so he can take Coleman Shelton's place at center. Ayo Edibiri may be small compared to Nate Davis, but she'd offer at least as much resistance at right guard. Abby Elliott displays incredible toughness as Sugar, so let's have her protect Caleb Williams' blind side in place of Braxton Jones.

Jamie Lee Curtis is an infrequent but memorable guest on the show as the matriarch of the Berzatto family. She's mean as hell, and that's what we're supposed to be getting from Teven Jenkins, so she can take over at left guard. Lastly, let's put Jon Bernthal in for Darnell Wright at right tackle. Who knows if he can block, but if he can distract the other team by throwing forks at them, it might give D'Andre Swift some room to run out wide. Cousin Richie has shown a willingness to learn new things on the show, so let's have Ebon Moss-Bachrach as our swing lineman to fill in if anybody goes down with an injury.

Bears overreaction 3: Caleb Williams needs to be throwing more, not less

I've seen a lot of people decrying the fact that Caleb threw the ball 52 times yesterday. "That's no recipe to win," they say, but I've got news for you: when Caleb isn't flinging it, this offense can not score, period. This is not an NFL offensive line, and this is not an NFL running game. Purdue could run on the Colts, yet the Bears couldn't do it. The same Texans team that held the Bears to 3.2 yards per carry just gave up a 100-yard game to Aaron Jones.

I realize that asking Caleb to drop back again and again behind this line is like asking him to walk through a minefield, but it's the only chance the Bears have. This offense hasn't scored at all through three games, except for when they've taken the training wheels off and let Caleb sling it. Is he going to take a lot of sacks? Oh yeah! Is he going to throw some interceptions because he's trying to do too much? Definitely! We saw it on Sunday as he threw two picks, but he's a rookie. That's how you learn.

The coaching staff seems to call plays not with the idea that they should be scoring points, but because they want to resemble what an NFL offense is supposed to look like. It's like aliens trying to pass themselves off as human. "We run on 1st and 10 because that's what you're supposed to do in the NFL." No, genius, the line can't block and you have a quarterback that was touted as a generational prospect. We don't need to keep putting him in 2nd-and-11.

I'm old enough to remember John Fox "protecting" Mitch Trubisky by implementing a gameplan so conservative that it would make Ronald Reagan blush. Matt Nagy shackled Justin Fields to cover for his supposed deficiencies as he tried to win every game 16-13. I don't want to live that way anymore. We as Bears fans don't need to live that way anymore!

Caleb is going to endure some growing pains, but he has the goods. He's getting the ball out quickly, he has a rocket for an arm, and he already has a special connection with fellow rookie Rome Odunze. Forget running the ball just to run it, and forget calling a dozen screen passes a game. God help me for quoting Herm Edwards, but you play to win the game, and the best chance for the Bears to win is to give Caleb the ball and get the hell out of his way. Maybe the Bears will win, maybe they'll lose, but at least they'll do it on their own terms.