In moving on from Matt Eberflus the day after Thanksgiving, the Chicago Bears gave themselves a five-week headstart on their head coaching search, allowing the powers that be the luxury to put together a search committee, a plan and a roadmap to start vetting candidates without sneaking around behind anyone’s back to do it.
It also allowed for nights like Thursday to happen.
On one end, the 6–3 snoozer against the Seattle Seahawks is a result of how this season was handled. You can’t take a pass-game coordinator, make him offensive coordinator and then head coach in 19 days, and expect all to be O.K. with your rookie quarterback. And it hasn’t been O.K. The Bears scored 45 points in December.
On the other end, there’s a lesson learned, and Thursday’s flatline after weeks of the offense circling the drain only further colors the complexion of the Bears’ search.
When Chicago set out to find its replacement for Eberflus a month ago, it was with the idea that there was much more to fix than just the quarterback. A culture change was needed, and a Dan Campbell–style leader of men would be best to turn around a franchise that last won a playoff game when Jay Cutler was quarterback and Lovie Smith was the head coach.
That logic remains sound.
Of course, so does the idea that Caleb Williams must be developed—and the Seattle stat line (16-of-28, 122 yards, 1 INT, 53.0 rating, seven sacks taken) and the operational issues Williams was buried under (clock management was a disaster down the stretch again) only highlight it.
