When Eric Washington made his leap into the NFL coaching ranks in 2008, leaving Northwestern for a job on Lovie Smith’s staff at Halas Hall, he did so with great eagerness and a push to continue learning.
Washington’s return to the Chicago Bears — his formal introduction as the team’s new defensive coordinator was Thursday — drops him into much different circumstances.
For starters, he is 16 years more experienced, and wiser for it, after a three-season run with the Bears plus subsequent stops with the Carolina Panthers and Buffalo Bills. Washington also now has a much more significant role with the Bears as the coordinator for Matt Eberflus’ defense.
Still, Washington reflects on his earliest days at Halas Hall from 2008-10 with fondness plus an appreciation for the defensive linemen he had the chance to work with. On Thursday afternoon, he name-dropped Julius Peppers, Alex Brown, Tommie Harris, Israel Idonije, Anthony Adams and Matt Toeaina, describing that bunch as a group of players with “a great blend of different skill sets but with similar mindsets.”
“They were a tough, aggressive bunch that loved the game,” Washington said. “They absolutely loved the game. … We were a defense at that particular time that was personnel driven and not scheme driven. We emphasized fundamentals. We weren’t trying to trick you with what we presented to the offense on a week-in and week-out basis. We wanted our foundation and our calling card to be the fundamentals and situational awareness and development and winning one-on-one.”
Now, inside a similar system, Washington will oversee a Bears defensive front headlined by Pro Bowl pass rusher Montez Sweat and including Andrew Billings, DeMarcus Walker and young tackles Gervon Dexter and Zacch Pickens.
Washington hopes to instill an aggressive mindset while pushing players to the next level.
Widely regarded as a detail-oriented coach with a penchant for connecting with his players, Washington can’t wait to aid the defensive resurgence the Bears showed last season. He wasn’t shy Thursday about vocalizing one of his biggest priorities: the quest to “build the best pass rush in football” while explaining his attraction to this job when he began the interviewing process last month.
“Number one, it’s an explosive group of players,” Washington said. “This defense was elite in several important categories that lead directly to winning football.”
Specifically, Washington highlighted the Bears’ success in stopping the run, a category in which they led the league, allowing 86.4 yards per game. “(It’s about) making teams one-dimensional,” Washington said.
Last season’s Bears also finished in the top five in takeaways with 28.
“When I looked at that in terms of those things being values,” Washington said, “those were the things that really got me excited.”
While Washington’s specialty is in coaching the line, his football acumen will allow him to put his fingerprints all over the Bears defense. He won’t handle play-calling duties with Eberflus choosing to hold on to those responsibilities. But Washington will be heavily involved in devising game plans and being a resource to Eberflus, who will be juggling defensive play-calling duties with his head coaching responsibilities.
Washington expressed confidence in Eberflus’ skill in handling the former at a successful level.
“It’s his ability to be situationally aware and understand exactly the situation we’re in and to then feed the players defensive concepts that will allow us to address that situation,” Washington said.
Washington emphasized that he had no reservations about taking a coordinator role that didn’t put him as the main man at the controls on game days. He and Eberflus quickly came to an understanding on that front.
“My focus was on what the job is as opposed to what it isn’t,” Washington said. “What we talked about more than anything was just how do we put forth the best scenario for 2024 to make sure our defense is going in the right direction.”
To that end, Washington is confident he can be an asset and is eager to get rolling.
“Matt has some really cool ideas,” he said. “And so you jump in and, from my role, you do everything you possibly can to perfect our system. You bring the experiences I’ve had over 16 years in the NFL and even before that in college football to add something, to inform, to maybe provide a different perspective or some tools or resources. That’s how I intend to approach it.”
