Chicago Bears star Keenan Allen indirectly criticized his head coach Matt Eberflus after their loss to the Detroit Lions coming after the team made a mess of their final seconds of the game.
The Bears had been just a few yards outside of field goal range on third down, while failing to use a timeout or gain a few yards to get into range for their kicker to tie up the game with the Lions, before quarterback Caleb Williams waited to get the call in from their offensive coaches and taking over 30 seconds to get a play off – which ended up being the final one of the game.
Eberflus had 36 seconds to call a timeout, but bizarrely choose not to and let his quarterback have the chance to go for it all. But even if the catch had been made, the clock would have ran out with the ball not being close to the endzone – leaving everyone watching confused as to what their plan had actually been.
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Chicago had pulled off an unlikely comeback in the second-half after being down three scores, with Williams performing strongly with his receivers Allen and DJ Moore.
After the game, Allen told reporters: “I feel like we did enough as players to win the game,” in quotes that appear damning for the future of Eberflus with rumors swirling throughout the past few weeks that he could be fired at the end of the season.
Despite the heat coming his way, Eberflus defended his handling of the final seconds of the game. Explaining his decision not to call a time out, Eberflus bizarrely stated that he felt he did things the right way.
He said: “You know, and then we’re there at second and 20. You know, take the sack right there. And, you know, so we’re at 36 seconds right there. And our hope was because it was third going into fourth that we would re-rack that play at 18 seconds, throw it inbounds, get it into the field goal range, and then call the timeout. And that’s where it was. And that was our decision-making process on that.
“Again, we were outside the field goal range, you know, so we needed to get a few more yards in as close as we can get. And then we’re going to call timeout. And that’s why we held that last timeout at the end of the game. So like I said, disappointing for the players. They put a lot of work in in a short week and put themselves in position to win that game. So with that, I’ll take questions.”
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