How Matt Eberflus revamped Chicago Bears into one of NFL's hottest defenses

A few months ago, Matt Eberflus' defense was playing like like the number one reason he should be fired as Chicago Bears head coach. 

Now, that defense might just save his job.

As team president Kevin Warren and general manager Ryan Poles evaluate whether to retain their coaching staff next season, Eberflus can point to the overhaul of his defensive play-calling, and the drastic improvement that followed, as his strongest evidence for returning in 2024.

It wasn't a disaster right out of the gate, but by the end of 2022, his Bears defense allowed the most points and fourth-most yards of any team. They picked up this season where they left off last year, allowing nearly 35 points per game over the first four weeks of 2023. The team was 0-4, and the city of Chicago had its pitchforks and torches ready.

Everything changed with their Week 5 win over the Washington Commanders on Thursday Night Football.

The defense generated its first two turnovers (that weren't against a backup quarterback in garbage time). They completely shut down an offense's running game for the first time. And they managed to hold on when their lead started to slip in the second half. It was their first win in almost a full calendar year.

Eberflus also watched Montez Sweat terrorize his quarterback with one and a half sacks plus a few QB hits, fantasizing about how nice that might look for his defensive line someday.

The win over the Commanders instilled confidence for what felt like the first time since he took the job, and it marked a sizable shift in how he called plays for his defense.

Eberflus and his staff had an extended break after the Thursday night victory to self-scout and evaluate what had worked well for them and what needed to change.

One of the big conclusions: A core tenant of his scheme wasn't working. His defense was known for sitting back in the soft zones of Cover 2 to prevent explosive plays down field. That style wasn't the right fit for his players in Chicago, especially as injuries ravished his secondary.

After what the team calls the "mini-bye week" of Week 5, Eberflus adjusted his play-calling and opted for a lot more single-deep safety coverages, mainly Cover 3.

This shift presented him with more flexibility in how the Bears disguise their coverage and blitzes, and it leveraged his cornerbacks in a scheme better suited to their skillsets.

In his primarily Cover 2 defense, both safeties dropped into deep zones on the majority of their coverage calls. Eberflus tried to disguise it at times by having one safety start in the box and then roll back to a deep zone, but opposing quarterbacks still knew both safeties would end up dropping deep more often than not.

Now with more of an emphasis on Cover 3 and single-deep coverages, Eberflus can rotate either safety deep and have the other closer to the line of scrimmage. He has more flexibility with which areas of the field he can assign each safety to cover, when they don't have such static responsibilities in deep zones. The disguises can be more creative. So can the blitzes.

Cover 3 also gives Jaylon Johnson and Tyrique Stevenson responsibilities more natural to their skillsets. Both are at their best when they can be physical in tight coverage and run with receivers down field. 

This coverages assigns them to a deep third of the field, so the cornerbacks can play that aggressive style of coverage on any routes that go vertical or out to the sideline, while passing off any routes that run toward the middle of the field. 

In Cover 2, Johnson and Stevenson had to play off coverage underneath and read the space between receivers more often. 

Johnson had just one pass break up in the first three games of the season before he was injured. In the seven games since, he has a career-high three interceptions with four passes defensed. 

It helps that they also added that Montez Sweat guy over the same span, and the defense as a whole recovered from the injury bug that plagued them early in the season. 

Some of the credit also belongs to offseason acquisitions like Tremaine Edmunds, TJ Edwards, Yannick Ngakoue, DeMarcus Walker and Andrew Billings all settling in to their new roles in the Bears' defense. And in mid-October, the team added former Carolina Panthers defensive coordinator Phil Snow as a senior defensive analyst.

But Matt Eberflus had the self-awareness and humility to recognize that what wasn't working and adapt his scheme to his players, instead of forcing them into a defense not built for them.

He still has flaws, and he might still be on his way out of Chicago. But his defensive turnaround sure makes it easier for Eberflus to justify his salary and maybe blame his offensive coordinator as a scapegoat to remain Bears head coach. At the very least, it will earn him another job as a defensive coordinator somewhere else.