DETROIT — Forty-nine minutes had passed after Thursday’s game at Ford Field had ended and six minutes had elapsed since Chicago Bears coach Matt Eberflus began his postgame news conference. It was then, and only then, that Eberflus finally indicated that he was still somewhat attached to reality.

Asked directly if he was worried about his job security, Eberflus nodded. “I mean, this is the NFL,” he said. “And I know where it is. I’m just going to put my best foot forward. And I’ll get to work and keep grinding.”

At this point, it’s over. The Eberflus experiment is cooked.

There’s next to no chance Eberflus will still have his office at Halas Hall beyond Week 18 of the regular season. And it might take some mental gymnastics from general manager Ryan Poles — with team president Kevin Warren as his sounding board — to keep the head coach’s key card to the facility activated beyond this holiday weekend.

That’s how astounding Thursday’s 23-20 loss to the Detroit Lions was, another defeat decided on the final play amid so much Bears chaos and sloppiness.

Indeed, the whole football world knows where it is now. There’s no coming back from this.

The Bears’ latest calamity ended Thursday with an absolutely astounding final-minute fiasco. It was coaching malpractice of the highest order with a dash of player failure mixed in, playing out in front of 64,275 spectators at Ford Field and giving a stunned national TV audience plenty to discuss over the Thanksgiving appetizer spread.

How?

How in the name of George Stanley Halas was this possible?

How did the oft-clumsy Bears become even more inept than usual, going from first down at the Lions 25 with 26 seconds remaining and the clock stopped — and well inside range for a game-tying field goal — to a bewildering loss that sent them back to Chicago with their sixth consecutive defeat; with their final timeout unused; with a possible fourth-down snap disintegrating?

How?

How did Eberflus not rescue rookie quarterback Caleb Williams from the end-of-game chaos by using his final timeout as time ticked away on the Bears’ incredible comeback bid?

Soooooo much time ticked away.

Five seconds. Then 10. Then 15.

Oh. My. God. What was happening?

Ultimately, 25 seconds elapsed from the time the Bears penultimate play ended — with a 5-yard sack — to when Williams took the game’s final snap.

Perhaps the rookie quarterback became a little too lost in the frenzy of everything that he botched his clock management duties. What’s impossible to deny is that Eberflus froze.

As the Bears tried to reset for a critical third-and-25 play from just outside Cairo Santos’ kick line, Eberflus did nothing to calm the chaos.

“We liked the play that we had,” Eberflus said after the game. “And we were hoping that (Williams) was going to call it or get the ball snapped and then we would’ve called timeout.”

Instead? Somehow, Thursday’s game-deciding snap turned out to be an audibled play that resulted in a desperation heave in the general direction of Rome Odunze near the end zone as time expired.

How?

How? How? #@$%@^!%& how?

And how, after all that undeniable disorder, did Eberflus say this in his postgame news conference?

“I like what we did there.”

And this, too: “I think we handled it the right way.”

Add this one to the stack as well.

“We’re right there,” Eberflus said. “We’ve just got to keep plugging along and it’s going to crack. It’s one more crack of the hammer.”

How?

In truth, the Bears chaos began with 36 seconds remaining when Williams’ 12-yard completion down to the Lions 13 yard line was negated by an illegal hands to the face penalty against left guard Teven Jenkins.

On the next play, inside a rocking and raucous road venue, reserve right tackle Larry Borom never reacted to the snap, allowing Za’Darius Smith to storm unblocked for his 5-yard sack of Williams.

So much for the quarterback draw the Bears had dialed up to set up their field goal attempt.

“I have to get to the bottom of that,” Eberflus said.

Added Williams: “I think (Larry) just missed or misheard the ‘go’ call. And then that’s what happened.

With Smith barreling in, Williams, too, missed his opportunity to throw the ball away. So the clock was running.

Thirty-two seconds remained.

An impressive second-half rally and a truly adrenalizing final drive was unraveling. But only a bit. And the Bears still had plenty of time to regroup. Williams stood up with 28 seconds left.

Eberflus still had his final timeout in his pocket. But he was reluctant to use it, hoping to save it instead to set up a game-tying field goal attempt.

“It’s a situation where you have to get the play in, you snap the ball and get it off and then call timeout,” Eberflus said. “That was the whole operation. We were all on the same page there. We just have to do it a little bit better.”

Williams, in his 12th NFL start, leaves it to Eberflus to manage the end-of-game timeout situation.

“That’s going to be coach’s call,” he said. “Maybe in the later years of my career …”

But was the 23-year-old quarterback surprised his coach’s call wasn’t for a timeout?

“Surprised?” Williams said. “Ummmm. I’m not going to say surprised or not. My job is to go out there and make plays. My job is to get everybody lined up and that’s it. ”

After the Jenkins penalty and the Smith sack, the Bears were out of field goal range and facing third-and-25. Thus a clock-killing spike wasn’t an option.

“Our hope,” Williams said, “was — because it was third (down) going into fourth — that we would re-rack that play at 18 seconds, throw it inbounds, get it into field goal range and then call a timeout.”

Williams noticed the clock evaporating and feared the play that was sent in would result in a completion over the middle that would allow the clock to expire. So he scrambled to change the play at the line of scrimmage.

All 11 Bears weren’t lined up and set until 14 seconds remaining.

“I don’t have a microphone to speak to coach or anything like that,” Williams said. “So there wasn’t any huge communication in that situation.”

Williams took the game’s last snap with six seconds remaining, targeted a deep matchup with Rome Odunze against fellow rookie Terrion Arnold and fired. It wasn’t all that close.

“I tried to give him a shot,” Williams said. “And we got the shot and missed.”

Odunze still felt dazed as he tried to recount the final incompletion.

“Caleb gave me a pump on it,” he said. “It was a tough coverage for the play. He threw it to where the safety wasn’t going to be. I tried to flip my head to get over there. I just wasn’t able to make the play.”

No time remained. Zero.

That was the end.

“All of a sudden, I saw everyone running onto the field,” Kmet said. “The game was over. And I was just kind of like, ‘What the eff just happened?'”

The Bears had lost. Again.

In devastating fashion. Again.

“It’s heartbreaking for sure,” Odunze said.

How?

How? How? How?

It should also be noted and emphasized that the Bears used their second timeout of the second half with 43 seconds remaining. That came following an incompletion when the offense’s operation in resetting for the next play was slow enough that the possibility of a delay-of-game penalty crept in.

It was another reminder that even the most minor glitches can lead to major breakdowns. With the Bears, they almost always do.

So how much longer can Eberflus be allowed to stay in charge? How much does he worry about just how significantly his players’ confidence in trust in him has disappeared?

“I would just say that we’ve got to pull together,” Eberflus said Thursday evening. “We’ve just got to keep pulling together and keep believing in each other.”

But how long ago did that redundant, overcooked and hollow rallying cry expire?

“You only want to hear it so much,” Kmet said. “Coach has got to say what he’s got to say, but I think at the end of the day, we all want the results. And we just haven’t had the results.”

His expression was a mixture of confusion and dejection.

How are the Bears right back here? In last place and falling apart. Again.

Kmet knows this brand of grief all too well. He is in the late stages of his fifth season and four of those years have ended either with the coach getting fired or the organization having serious discussions about whether the coach should be fired. The one that didn’t? The 2022 season, which ended with a franchise-record 10-game losing streak and an NFL-worst 3-14 record.

So, yeah.

“The frustration is pretty high right now,” Kmet said. “It’s upsetting. … Guys are pretty P-O’d. It’s tough.”

How did the Bears get here? From 4-2 at their bye week to 4-8 for Thanksgiving dinner.

How is it possible that this stretch of six consecutive losses includes a disastrous Hail Mary loss to the Commanders; a one-point defeat to the rival Packers on a final-play blocked field goal; a dizzying overtime loss to the Vikings; and whatever the hell that was in the final minute Thursday?

“I’m the head football coach,” Eberflus said. “So I’m taking the blame, of course. That’s what you do. We didn’t get it done. So it starts at the top. And it starts right here.”

Eberflus knows exactly where this is. And it’s very possible he stood by and watched more than one clock expire Thursday.

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