Lincicome: Poster-doofus Eberflus latest in long line of Bears coaching failures

As poster-doofus of the moment, Matt Eberflus has deftly avoided the dreaded kiss of death, otherwise known as the vote of confidence, which in sports is like the unopened letter from the IRS.

Oh, sure, Eberflus will be fired and the over-under is Thanksgiving or New Year’s, and credit to Eberflus for enduring the mounting weekly told-you-so’s and the audible disapproval on game days.

He is the pinata at the party, hanging around, awaiting the inevitable swat.

Eberflus has no real option but to beat on, a boat against the current—not to get too literary about this—while his reputation recedes, if it was there in the first place.

He should have been fired after last season. That is a handy and popular second-guess, though the won-lost numbers back it up. Eberflus could not figure out how to develop a raw talent like Justin Fields, so why expect him to grow a consensus better one in Williams?

Giving a No. 1 draft choice to a No. 30 head coach is like putting the good silver in the coleslaw.

Caleb Williams has regressed and it must be Eberflus’ fault, while the blame is placed on dismissed offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, heretofore anonymous but now branded as the reason a generational talent, as Williams has been widely identified, is turning into a bit of a growing wart.

Williams has worked his way down the quarterback ratings, resting below the belt size of his offensive linemen.

Moment of the season may be from the nine-sack Patriots game when a New England linebacker named Anfernee Jennings helped Williams up after a sack and patted him on helmet as if he were a pet having learned a new trick.

Worse, Williams allowed himself to be helped up by an opponent, or even worse, yet, no Bears were there to help Williams.

“The details of creativity have to improve,” concluded Eberflus, sounding like my old journalism instructor.

Thus we now have Thomas Brown, an alias if ever I heard one, stepping up as curator of Project Caleb, identified by Eberflus as having “passion, energy, tenacity, toughness and collaboration, none of which would seem to help make the right call on third and long.

This is known generally as covering your, uh, back, placing blame and showing the door. Eberflus is good at it, running through assistants like milk through an infant. When the same happens to him, and to Ryan Poles eventually, the path will be well worn.

Ex-Bears coaches live on, some at reunions, some with other teams, some on local cable television, wiser now than he ever was before, having left no lasting scars and a few happy memories. So it will be for Eberflus. He is beyond doing further harm, unless he continues to leave Caleb Williams in games that are long lost.

“I take full responsibility,” said Eberflus, as if he had any other choice.

Speculation from strangers suggest replacements for the Bears next head coach, most loudly Jon Gruden or Bill Belichick because they are famed and the Bears used to be famed, meaning faded legends deserve each other, I guess.

I will say this about that, whoever the next coach is, he will not be more prominent than Poles, the man behind the curtain. Credit rises while blame floats.

Poles, generally responsible for everything Bears, the good, the bad, and Eberflus, lurks in private while his coach publicly patches the unpatchable and his rookie quarterback dodges blame.

While it may be true that Ebeflus is hopeless, Poles is pompous and Caleb Williams is overrated and overpriced, this is where the Bears are, victims of expectation, not laughingstocks as much as cursed losers.

The world wanted the Bears to be better; that is, the world of sports and sports punditry, those media folks who daily yell at each other about nothing important, or write opinion pieces like this one that matter not one bit.

Here’s the truth. When Chicago sports are prominent, so are the rest of us, and so we agonize loudly and applaud inconsistently, knowing that this quarterback may already be too flawed to fix and that the next coach will never be Mike Ditka.

That’s the real curse.