Watching film with Bears coach Matt Eberflus: Inside the mind of a teacher (2024)

LAKE FOREST, Ill. — It’s four days before the Chicago Bears’ first practice of training camp, and head coach Matt Eberflus is standing next to his desk in a football position.

“So let’s talk about plant, point and drive,” he says, slapping his right knee.

Eberflus is demonstrating a key tenet of defensive technique.

“He plants with the right foot. You can see it, right?” he says, pointing to the television screen in front of him, and then to his left foot. “He points with his left foot the exact direction you’re going when it’s less than 90 (degrees).”

On Eberflus’ desktop computer and the large television on the wall is a play from last season. Eberflus paused it right before linebacker T.J. Edwards’ hit popped the ball in the air. Fellow linebacker Tremaine Edmunds would intercept it and return it for a touchdown.

But before anything — before the hit, the pick, the return, the score — Eberflus needs to talk about what Edwards did.

“Plant, point and drive,” linebacker T.J. Edwards echoes a couple of weeks later, with one of those laughs reflecting a student who has heard his teacher repeat the same mantra over and over.

This is Eberflus in his element. He’s a teacher. Even in an interview setting, he’s teaching his technique and why a play was successful as if his audience was about to put on shoulder pads and head to the practice field.

He emphasizes every possible detail, from the direction of a toe to the time it takes to cover three yards. For all the talk about Eberflus’ new style, he’s still the linebacker from Ohio who loves “talking ball.”

What better way to understand the man and his defense than a film session? Eberflus sat down with The Athletic to dissect a few key plays from the defense last season.

Eberflus wants to talk about Zacch Pickens’ foot. The first play is a tackle for loss by nickelback Kyler Gordon. To the naked eye, Pickens isn’t prominently involved. But to Eberflus, and most coaches, it “takes all 11,” and that brings us to the rookie defensive tackle’s toes.

“Watch this foot,” Eberflus says, pausing the clip. “See how it’s straight ahead? Right there, see it? Now, watch him penetrate. Watch this. Boom! See that? That’s elite right there.”

It’s Week 10, “Thursday Night Football,” and the Carolina Panthers are starting their drive at the 9-yard line early in the third quarter. This is where Eberflus, who might have an old-school mentality, begins his play-calling process with analytics.

“I know that your chances of getting a three-and-out is better when you get a negative play on first down,” he said. “The first drive of the series, if you have a negative play on that, your likelihood to move the ball very much is very low.”

It’s not revolutionary thinking, but it’s what led Eberflus to be aggressive. He’s thinking about a three-and-out for a team backed up and his offense getting the ball in enemy territory. And it can all start with a pressure from the slot corner position.

But Eberflus takes some time before he talks about Gordon, who got the tackle six yards behind the line of scrimmage. He starts with Montez Sweat and a penetrating defensive line — one that had success because the linemen’s toes were pointed in the right direction. He points out cornerback Jaylon Johnson’s coverage, rookie corner Tyrique Stevenson showing a pressure and safety Jaquan Brisker handling the weak side.

Every element matters. Now he can get to the guy who made the play.

When the NFL outlawed the “hip drop” tackle, Eberflus wasn’t really concerned. He’s been teaching the same tackling technique for 30-plus years, the hamstring tackle.

“We want to do a great job of grabbing the hamstrings or below, and then pull them in,” Eberflus says. “And then we run for three hard steps. It’s a low tackle. It’s a safe tackle. The DBs love it. They can tackle big guys that way.”

Gordon disguises his blitz and hits his hole unimpeded as he approaches Panthers running back Miles Sanders. Eberflus now wants to talk about Gordon’s helmet.

“It’s not in front of the runner,” he says. “He’s a little bit high here. He’s got to go lower than that. But we always tell them to roll back to the line of scrimmage. So you grab around the hamstrings, now you’re going to roll back to the line of scrimmage. And that puts the guy down right where he sits.”

Here comes Professor Eberflus.

“What are we trying to do with this hamstring tackle?” he asks. “What’s the objective of this? It’s to eliminate hidden yards because we know on first down here that if he misses that tackle, it’s not a minus-six.”

.@kyler_gordon was EVERYWHERE Thursday 🕷️ pic.twitter.com/SToVi18rvp

— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) November 13, 2023

In the middle of analyzing the next play, Eberflus has a basic geometry lesson.

And yes, it has to do with the toes.

“I was just talking to Richard Dent about this the other day when I was on the golf course with him. … Everything always points to the quarterback,” he says.

The main character on the screen is Sweat. He’s chasing down Minnesota Vikings quarterback Joshua Dobbs.

“If you look at his toes, look at his hips. Everything’s (pointed) at who? That guy,” Eberflus says, moving his cursor to Dobbs. “What young rushers do a lot of times is they want to rush this way and the hips and toes are pointing that way. No. The shortest distance between two points is what? A straight line.”

It’s third-and-9 from the Vikings’ 39-yard line on their first drive of the game in Minnesota. An avid golfer in his limited free time, Eberflus the play caller goes to a club in his bag he hasn’t used all season.

He lines Sweat up at defensive tackle, just to the right of Yannick Ngakoue in the team’s “green rush group.” It’s the first time any opponent had seen that alignment. His linebackers are “mugging,” showing they might blitz right up the gut by standing over the center.

The play design calls for Sweat and Ngakoue to run a stunt — Ngakoue will fake outside and rush inside, and Sweat will loop around.

“It doesn’t work unless Ngakoue sells the vertical rush,” Eberflus says. “You can see he’s taken off right there, one, two, three, on the third step he’s planting.”

Once Ngakoue plants the foot outside, he darts back in, with Sweat rushing around him.

“The guard actually does a pretty dang good job of banging (Sweat) out. See it right there?” Eberflus says. “But since he’s paid so much attention to that, Ngakoue’s got penetration and he would have been there for the sack.”

Ngakoue gets tripped up, and Eberflus turns his focus to Sweat.

“If you watch his right arm, he’s chopping that down. The left hand comes down, watch the chop, and then rip!” Eberflus says, as Sweat “rips” through the offensive lineman, pushing him aside with his arm as he blows past. “What happens when he chops? What does he do to the tackle there? He gets him off balance. You can see him right there lunging forward. Now he’s done.”

Then comes Sweat’s straight line to Dobbs, and, “because Tez is fast, he can hawk them down pretty fast.”

There’s one thing Eberflus wants to fix for next time, though. He’s always teaching.

“I want him to chop down through the wrist,” Eberflus says, pointing to the football as Sweat literally does a chopping motion down toward it. “See it? That makes a difference. I know he’s trying to do it with his left hand, but he should always do it with the ball-side hand.”

Every detail matters. The sack ends the drive and helps the Bears with field position. A strip-sack, though? Now you’re talking points.

Eberflus has a saying — well, he has many — but one is, “Never walk by a coaching point.”

“Praise him when they do it right,” he says, “and never walk by a mistake. Keep correcting it.”

A great sight for @ChicagoBears fans 😤 @_sweat9

📺: #CHIvsMIN on ESPN/ABC
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/J5tLNJHyh1 pic.twitter.com/K6VofQ7NTT

— NFL (@NFL) November 28, 2023

The flight home from Cleveland last December could’ve been celebratory, but the Bears blew a lead, squandering three stellar quarters from the defense. It also meant one of the best plays of the season, a play that showed everything Eberflus touts as part of his philosophy, didn’t get a ton of attention.

Eberflus didn’t dial up anything exotic. The Bears were in a standard defense. There wasn’t a pressure or a stunt, just everyone — cliche time — doing their job.

At the beginning of practice every day, the linebackers do their “plant, point and drive” drill.

“We’re getting to our drop, we’re looking at the quarterback, and then we’re breaking on the ball,” Edwards says. “That’s literally what we start our day off with.”

It’s first down early in the third quarter and the Browns have it at their 40-yard line. As Joe Flacco drops back to pass, Eberflus pauses the play and puts his cursor on No. 53, Edwards.

He explains how they study quarterbacks and their drop to have an idea of where the ball might go, and how quickly it might come out.

Edwards is eyeing Browns receiver Amari Cooper, and that’s where Flacco decides to go with the ball. The Bears’ linebacker plants his foot, points his foot and drives toward the receiver.

“Why is that important? Because we know that when we do that, we are going to be hitting the receiver before he’s ready to be hit,” Eberflus says. “(Edwards) created that with his vision, with his plant, point and drive, and with his elite break.”

Eberflus becomes a math teacher. He sees a pass that goes about 10 yards in the air and asks his student what one-third of that is — 3.3.

He believes that his players would be able to break one-third of the distance the ball will travel while it is in the air. Eberflus slows down the video to go frame by frame as Edwards breaks on the ball.

“We said it’s going 10 yards. He’s got to break 3.3 (yards), right? So, let’s see how many,” Eberflus says, as he begins to count. “He was at five. He exceeded it, right? He broke half the distance when the ball’s in the air. Now that’s elite right there by T.J. Edwards.”

This is only the hit that popped the ball in the air. We’ve got a long way to go. But Eberflus isn’t even done with Edwards.

“See how he’s still driving his feet? You know why?” he asks. “Because he’s been ingrained through drill work and fundamentals to go three hard (steps). So I’m not just running to the guy, I’m running through him.”

There’s another drill the Bears’ linebackers do at practice that Eberflus wants to highlight. They’ll put arms on a pop-up bag — a tackling dummy — and throw a football at the arm so that the linebackers have to try to catch the ball off the deflection.

And that’s why Edmunds was ready to pick off the pass.

There’s detail to everything, including how to return an interception. Eberflus coaches his defensive players to keep the ball on the inside arm, return it up the numbers, and finish “through the paint” of the end zone to avoid a fumble before the goal line. Edmunds does it all.

On the return, Stevenson makes a “remarkable play.” He scans the field and looks for Browns to block, then he performs a “hip by” block, a subtle movement to get in the way of the pursuant without getting a flag.

Even as Eberflus goes on and on about Stevenson’s “hell of a play,” there’s a teaching point.

“It can still be better,” he says. “Watch, I’m just telling you the instantaneous reaction is not good enough. Watch the delay. See it?”

Eberflus snaps his fingers. His team scored a pick-six, but he never walks past a coaching point. The reaction needed to be faster.

EDMUNDS TO THE HOUSE #ProBowlVote + @maine_savage23 pic.twitter.com/dud2g3Pf9t

— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) December 17, 2023

As a sophom*ore at Whitmer High School in Toledo, Eberflus played cornerback. The next year, he was moved to safety. After two linebackers graduated and Eberflus was up to 210 pounds, his head coach, Pat Gucciardo, asked Eberflus to move to linebacker.

That summer, Eberflus would work out, then join Rob Rose, the defensive coordinator, in a dark room.

“It was old-school film,” he says. “I’d sit there and watch it. He taught me the defense. In that year, I was first-team All-State as a linebacker and I went to Toledo and had my football career.

“And that’s kind of where I started to fall in love with (watching film).”

Now, entering his third year as Bears head coach, Eberflus will watch the replay an hour after he gets home from a game at Soldier Field — first is dinner with his family. Then he’s in his office at Halas Hall at 5 a.m. the next day to begin his film review.

Linebackers coach Dave Borgonzi coached with Eberflus in Dallas for three seasons before joining him in Indianapolis in 2018. He’s been through countless Eberflus film sessions.

“As coaches, you’re always trying to make the complex simple,” Borgonzi said. “We have a saying, ‘See a little, see a lot.’ Sometimes guys try to see everything and they see nothing. … Making it easy for the players to understand, making it easy for the coaches to teach. His big thing is he wants the players to play fast.”

This is where Eberflus is at home. It’s what he’s done for 30-plus years.

“I think every coach, no matter head coach, coordinator, position coach, you’re a teacher,” he says.

He has one more metaphor for Eberflus 101, and how he implores his coaches to help the players play fast.

“As a coach, you have to take time to cook the meal and present it on a plate to give to the player,” he says. “Not, ‘Hey, let’s go pick up these ingredients. We need salt, pepper, onion, all that stuff.’ He doesn’t need to hear all that.

“That’s your job. You cook it up for him. You spend the time thinking about what it takes to get that done. … You figure that out. That’s your job as a coach. And then you present it to him and say, ‘Hey, I have this, it’s this and this, done, and these are the drills we’re going to use to get this and this done. Then we’re going to practice it with speed.’”

While he breaks down one more play, a Jack Sanborn tackle for a loss, Eberflus stands up again and moves to the side of his desk. He’s in a tackling position, showing “how to generate force” by using the same foot and shoulder.

Eberflus then does something he hasn’t done yet in this film session. We’ve been watching the coaches’ copy from different angles. But he switches to the Fox television feed. Suddenly, Adam Amin’s voice pipes through the speakers. Sanborn has made the tackle, but Eberflus wants to show the reaction when everything his players work on pays off.

He’s proud of the celebration.

“I love this play because of the swarm of the defense,” he says. “We’re knocking them back. And then to me, I showed the defense a bunch of times about the celebration afterward. I mean, this is like pure joy.”

(Top photo: Kevin Fishbain / The Athletic)