George McCaskey on search for the next Bears head coach |
CHICAGO - The new year started well for Chicago Bears fans by taking down the Green Bay Packers 24-22 in the season finale. It capped off a tumultuous season with three different offensive coordinators, two head coaches, and a 10-game losing streak. In the final home game during the losing streak, fans could be heard chanting ‘Sell the team!’ as they were leaving the stadium.
This team has been owned by the same family for its entire history. Chairman George McCaskey is the grandson of founder George Halas. Chicago was a respected franchise back in the days of Papa Bear Halas, but it has gone downhill since McCaskey ran the show. Perhaps selling the team would be a good idea, or it would not fix the Bears’ problems. However, it seems clear that McCaskey needs to step away as Chairman. When asked about the fans chanting at the Seattle Seahawks game in the home finale, McCaskey said he was bothered more by the Detroit Lions fans attempting to take over Soldier Field even though he personally sold a suite to a large group of Lions fans. “Our fans are passionate. They’re incredibly frustrated. They wanted to make sure voices heard. I was more bothered by the week before when Lions fans tried to take over Soldier Field and force the home team to go to a silent snap count. Fortunately, that didn’t happen,” McCaskey said. “It’s understandable that Bears fans would sell their tickets because of the way the season has gone and the challenge for us is to put a team on the field that Bears fans are so excited about, they’re not interested in selling their tickets.” Chicago has not done well hiring head coaches. The Bears had not won a playoff game since 2010 when Lovie Smith was their head coach. Since Smith, Chicago has had five head coaches in 12 seasons, including Thomas Brown, who was the interim head coach this year. Matt Nagy is the only one who took Chicago to the playoffs, doing so twice in 2018 and 2020. When trying to hire this head coach, McCaskey said that general manager Ryan Poles has laid out a strong process for finding the coach of the future. “You learn from your experiences, gaining wisdom and insight into the process. We’re very excited about the process that Ryan has laid out,” McCaskey said. “We’re going to start that process … and we’re looking forward to it.” It is unclear how appealing coming to Chicago will be for coaching prospects such as Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson who is commonly considered one of the best head coach prospects available this offseason. While they have a quarterback of the future in Caleb Williams, there was also a lot of dysfunction and it appeared to be toxic at times throughout the year. Perhaps nothing highlights the chaos of this past season more than the Tyrique Stevenson debacle. Chicago should have beat the Washington Commanders. They were one play away. Former head coach Matt Eberflus mismanaged the situation and should have used his timeouts. However, they may not have been as bad if cornerback Tyrique Stevenson had not turned his back to the play in the middle of the play and then tried to intercept the ball instead of knocking it down while also failing to guard the player he was tasked with defending. That player was receiver Noah Brown, who ultimately caught the Hail Mary touchdown. Even McCaskey had never seen anything like it, although he indicated he thought the situation was handled properly. “I had never seen anything like that as an observer of this great game for more than 60 years. I was more interested after it happened in his reaction and his teammates’ reaction,” McCaskey said. “I think he understood that he made a mistake. He owned up to it. He apologized to his teammates. He apologized to the fans and he said he was going to learn from it and I think he did.”
