The Bears are facing the most momentous hiring decision in their history. Some might argue that they’re facing the most momentous decision, period, in their history. I would argue that that came before the 2017 draft, when they sized up quarterbacks Mitch Trubisky and Patrick Mahomes, and decided Trubisky was a giant-in-waiting. But that’s hindsight, and I don’t want to depress you any more than you already are as you sit in a dark room and gorge on Ho Hos.
The Bears are not off to a great start in their hunt to replace the discarded Matt Eberflus, the first head coach in team annals to be dumped during a season. According to ESPN’s Seth Wickersham, six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick saw the Bears’ opening as the most attractive in the NFL. But he reportedly thought the team, hoping to get the best out of quarterback Caleb Williams, would pursue an offensive-minded coach. And so, having decided he had no shot in Chicago, he gave the University of North Carolina the old college try.
I don’t know if Belichick would have been the right choice at this point in his career and at this juncture in the franchise’s history. If you’re a Bears fan with a distrust of pretty much everything the organization does — a show of hands? — the frightening thing is that there doesn’t seem to have been much interest on the Bears’ end in one of the winningest coaches in league history.
I mean, who’d want a guy who wins?
At a minimum, bringing Belichick in for an interview and listening to him tell you what’s wrong with your franchise would be educational. Painful but educational. At this point, you’d think Bears chairman George McCaskey would drop the charade of erudition and eagerly take in what a coaching legend has to say about an NFL team that has been all but estranged from playoff victories the last 23 years.
What should really scare anyone who cares about this team is the hard-to-shake thought that McCaskey would much prefer to elevate interim coach Thomas Brown than hire someone with as much knowledge as Belichick. The Bears played the Vikings on Monday night, giving McCaskey three more hours to allow himself to fall in love with the idea of Brown as a head coach. History tells us he’s easily smitten by someone who A) doesn’t have much head-coaching experience, B) would be relatively cheap and C) wouldn’t care about power.
Again, I’m not sure if Belichick would have been the right fit in Chicago, but I do suspect that if the Bears were so quick to ignore a man with 302 career victories, it can’t bode well for their search.
If they get this decision wrong, the way they’ve gotten so many of these hires wrong, it would leave a crater that would take years to fill. That’s not hyperbole. That’s truth. They have Williams, a 23-year-old with more talent than any quarterback they’ve ever had. He needs coaching. He’s at a critical moment in his development. I see a potential superstar underneath all the growing pains. Doubters see a kid making the same mistakes week after week. One thing both sides can agree on: His ability is going to take him only so far.
I’d love for the decision-making to be taken out of the Bears’ hands. I’d love for there to be a candidate so obvious that the hire would be McCaskey-proof. I don’t see that candidate out there.
The Bears reportedly want a “leader of men,’’ but just because they want that doesn’t mean it should be the most crucial quality in their next head coach. It just means somebody at Halas Hall has been reading books about leadership.
Former Titans coach Mike Vrabel is one of the betting favorites to be the Bears’ next hire, but he’s also a defensive coach. That shouldn’t be an automatic disqualifier, not for a franchise as coach-needy as this one is.
It’s sort of like the draft. Do you take the best player available or do you draft for need? Are the Bears avoiding the best coaches available because those coaches happen to work on the wrong side of the ball? They shouldn’t be. We can have the great radio talk-show debate — was the Patriots’ phenomenal success due to Belichick’s coaching or Tom Brady’s passing? — or we can acknowledge that somehow Brady became what he was under Belichick. Williams just needs a good head coach.
If the loud, large Vrabel is the sort of leader team president Kevin Warren wants so badly, his defensive background shouldn’t disqualify him from serious consideration by the Bears. Nor should the fact that his Titans finished no better than 21st in passing yards in any of his six seasons in Tennessee — much of that had to do with having a star running back in Derrick Henry.
Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson is the hot candidate on that side of the ball. His squad scored 42 points against the Bills on Sunday night, and Bears fans likely were salivating at the thought of him on their sideline next year.
But if McCaskey does hire him, surely it would give those long-suffering fanatics pause. Old George is the man who gave the nod to the last four Bears head coaches — in order, Marc Trestman, John Fox, Matt Nagy and Eberflus. How’d that work out?
Scary times.
