Matt Eberflus keeping his hard-working mindset throughout training camp
Matt Eberflus has been head coach of the Chicago Bears for just over 4 months, but we've already heard plenty about how he wants to reshape the team's culture using his HITS philosophy. Built on «hustle,» «intensity,» taking the ball away and taking care of the ball,» and playing «smart and situationally,» Eberflus' central pillars are all based on effort, both mentally and physically. It may sound like typical coach-speak, but those close to Eberflus say those tenets are everything in his system. New Bears defensive coordinator Alan Williams came to Chicago from the Colts with Eberflus, and he said it's more demanding than one may imagine, too.
«What we're going to ask them to do is going to be一 it's not difficult but it's extremely hard,» Williams said. «We're going to ask guys to give us 100% when they get on the field, 100% hustle. We're going to ask guys to be intense. We're going to ask them to do some things that they might not be used to doing.»
Well, it looks like Eberflus and his staff have been on the same page ever since training camp started. I don't remember seeing a bunch of players look as motivated as they have looked so far.
Multiple players described Friday's practice as the most grueling of training camp. Eberflus called Saturday's workout "a carbon copy."
"He's keeping his promise," said linebacker Nicholas Morrow. "That's for one, and then for two, he wants to make it hard enough that when you get to the game, it's not as hard or maybe you've had that intensity before, then you can adapt to it."
The message that Eberflus is sending in his first year as Bears coach is crystal clear.
"If you want to be a good football team, you have to have mental and physical stamina," Eberflus said. "And to build that callous, to build that stamina, you have to go through hard, and you can't do it by going through soft.
"That's just what our practices do. So the tempo which we practice, how we execute with speed, and what we're asking in the standards that we're asking our players to do, that builds that mental and physical stamina."
"You have to do that because in pro football you have different front variations, different protection rules and those types of things," Eberflus said. "And then on defense, you face different quarterbacks during the course of the year that sometimes will do more quarterback runs than normal, and you really have to have your rules down for that, so that's why we did that."
I absolutely love this mindset and I am certain that this philosophy will be one that the younger players and the veterans will buy into as well.
