When you get fired midway through your first season on a team, something must’ve gone horribly wrong. Shane Waldron came over from Seattle in January to take over as offensive coordinator. The initial impression was that the Chicago Bears had made a safe choice. He’d had three decent years with the Seahawks, helping them to back-to-back winning seasons. However, it didn’t take long for red flags to start popping up. They were initially subtle, with the team struggling with penalties in training camp.
From there, Caleb Williams struggled to find easy completions, the running game did not find any space, and appalling pass protection plans couldn’t handle frequent blitzes. Things bottomed out last Sunday against New England when the Bears managed only three points, and Williams was sacked nine times. Waldron was fired after only nine games. So what on earth happened? Details have started coming out, and let’s just say they’re about as appalling as you’d expect.
We’ll start with Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune mentioning Waldron’s issue with having zero leadership presence, leading to a lack of respect among veteran players.
“How can Brown be an improvement over Shane Waldron? I think he’s more relatable to players. I think he’ll do a better job of standing in front of the offense and presenting a plan on a weekly basis. I believe he’ll have a stronger presence in meetings, and that matters. A coach has to be able to sell his game plan and strategy to players. He has to deliver a message that gets them believing in the plan. That was one of the confusing things to me about Waldron. He wasn’t dynamic in front of the room, and coordinators can overcome that if they’re on the cutting edge when it comes to scheme and strategy — but he wasn’t that either.”
In the video above, he mentions how the coordinator would hear player’s requests for certain plays to be called but wouldn’t make the adjustment until a few drives later. Often, he would even wait until halftime to get something done, which explains why the team had constant issues with slow starts. Finally, Albert Breer of the MMQB exposed another insane detail. It seems Waldron rarely brought the entire offense together in meetings, instead opting to keep guys separated by position group.
No wonder the Bears’ offense always looked so disjointed. There was zero chemistry between the guys on the field, and everybody had a different viewpoint of what the plan was supposed to be. Shane Waldron lacked basic common sense in fostering a cohesive environment and didn’t have the mental capacity to tweak his game plan when things didn’t go right early. No wonder players got fed up so fast. They realized he was entirely out of his depth. The longer he stayed in charge, the likelier it would be that the season slipped away.
