Thomas Brown has only met Brian Flores a few times. But two weeks ago, he felt like he’d gotten to know the Vikings coordinator just by watching his aggressive, blitzing defense on film.
“I think one of the biggest compliments you can get as a coach,” Brown said, “is, your unit takes on your personality.”
Brown was 17 days into trying to get his offense to take on his own personality when he was promoted to the Bears' interim coach Nov. 29. Brown’s new task is to, in five short weeks, get the entire team to become a reflection of him.
Friday, he finished his first week of practices.
“I just appreciated the coaches and the players for their response,” Brown said. “A lot of juice, a lot of guys running around the right way.”
Ask Brown about the personality he wants his team to show and he’ll say it’s not about him. Then he’ll lay out his suspicion, with a knowing smile, that he might have been better wired to play defense than running back at Georgia, where he ran for 2,646 yards in four years.
“Football's a violent game and rewards those that'll play the game violently,” Brown said. “Physical at every position is going to be our mentality.”
He insists upon that on both sides of the ball.
“Everybody just going out there,” receiver DJ Moore said, “and trying to whoop on the next person in front of them.”
Brown said he wants players to “understand the physicality that comes with this role, the discipline that comes with how we apply ourselves and try to maximize every opportunity we have.”
They’ve heard him.
“I think he’s a ‘dawg’ as a coach,” defensive tackle Gervon Dexter said. “That’s what kind of coach he is, if a coach is talking about playing violent and knocking stuff back.”
Brown’s bosses must like the sound of that — an offensive coach with a defensive mentality —as they ponder his candidacy for the full-time gig. Linebacker T.J. Edwards, who grew up in Lake Villa, does too.
“I think that is Chicago football, right?” Edwards said. “That's how it has kind of been built — that's the expectation of this league. Normally, the most physical team wins.
“And we like to think that we're physical, but we got to go out there and show it.”
There’s one spot exempt from such violence: quarterback, where Brown would rather Caleb Williams’ toughness be more mental than physical.
“How you play, how you command a huddle,” Brown said. “I try to tell him every day, I think he has an obviously very difficult job, as a quarterback position, the command, the communication. At times it gets frustrating.”
Brown has a captive audience beyond Williams over the final five games of the season.
“I’m pretty sure it will look better with [Brown] going 5-0 than it would be us going 0-5 … ” cornerback Jaylon Johnson said. “With him at the top, it will look good if we win out and just win as many games as we can. Individually, guys got to show up, got to make plays. Because if Thomas isn’t the one that is here, a lot of us have got to restart.”
Brown oozes confidence — “I'm going to be myself in every room I walk in,” he said — and is being asked to lead a team desperate for self-assurance after six consecutive losses and three late-game gaffes.
It's up to his players to soak up as much of his personality as they can — and his bosses to figure out if that’s what the Bears need in the long term.
Brown knows how the NFL works. It's just as violent as the team he wants to coach.
“We live in a results-driven business,” Brown said. “That's what we all sign up for. When things go well, people sing your praises. When things don't go well, they ask for your head.”
