New Bears coach Thomas Brown preached accountability for a team that needed it — then took it a step further

Thomas Brown had an easy start as the interim head coach of the Chicago Bears, preaching accountability.

It would also be easy for Brown to simply state the importance of the pillar and demonstrate it later.

This was just his first press conference as interim head coach, less than a month after being promoted to offensive coordinator following the Shane Waldron firing.

But Brown said he wants his team to embody three “abilities: coachability, accountability and reliability.

“That’s all of us, including me,” he said Monday afternoon. “I am not above coaching. I am not above responsibility. We can do it together.”

Then he showed it.

Unprompted, before opening the floor for questions, Brown mentioned the team’s recent late-game losses. The Bears lost to the Washington Commanders on a poorly defended Hail Mary in late October. They have lost the last three games by a combined seven points thanks to a blocked kick, power plays and poorly managed timekeepers.

Matt Eberflus was an easy scapegoat after he was fired on Friday. Brown didn’t stop the liability there.

“I know at the end of some of these games, there’s a lot of exploration and conversation and dialogue about what happened,” Brown said Monday. “I am not exempt from responsibility for these actions.

“The word ‘team’ – I believe in doing things together. We reward each other together, we are also criticized together. So we will have an internal process that we will go through on a weekly basis to prepare for these opportunities. And on the day of the match we will execute.

“Don’t panic, do a great job of communicating, be ready for the moment, make a decision and go for it.”

On Thanksgiving, the Bears rallied from a 16-0 halftime deficit to outscore their division rival Detroit Lions 20-7 in the second half. They then got the ball back with 3:31 to play at their own 1-yard line.

Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams found receiver DJ Moore for 25 yards on third-and-7 and 21 on fourth-and-4. Williams returned one sack for 14 yards and another for 13. In all, the Bears moved 52 yards. But after a sack with 31 seconds left, the Bears didn’t call a timeout. Williams tried to rush his team when 4 yards stood between them and their expected field goal range. Instead, the clock ran out on a missed pass to Rome Odunze. The Bears lost 23-20.

There wasn’t even a field goal attempt.

why?

Brown addressed the gaffe publicly and to his players.

“Like I said this morning about the offense: There’s a lot of dialogue about those last few plays, those last seconds,” Brown said. to complete the game.

“So yes, it’s important that we step up in these moments. However, it should not be forgotten that we had several opportunities during the match. We dug ourselves into a hole in the first half, we fought our way back into the game… [and] he had several opportunities to go to execution before.”

Brown modeled for his players what it means to face mistakes. He could have relied on his earlier line that “nobody cares what happened before,” but the coach, who preached “it’s not about the event, it’s about the reaction,” instead responded by refusing to throw Eberflus under the bus and acknowledging his own role.

“I’m not going to interfere with what was communicated, not communicated, because that’s irrelevant, that’s over now,” Brown said. “However, I definitely had the opportunity to learn from it.

“And I don’t absolve myself of responsibility in these scenarios.”