One thing is for certain as the Chicago Bears continue through this high-stakes search for their head next coach: They have lost the benefit of the doubt.
That is among Bears fans, naturally, who have seen their team flounder under the oversight of Chairman George McCaskey and have taken note that, since McCaskey took charge in 2011, the team has yet to win a playoff game while posting seven last-place seasons and firing three general managers and five head coaches.
That’s why, in the final minutes of the team’s home finale last month, agitated fans at Soldier Field serenaded McCaskey and his family with an impassioned request.
“Sell the team! Sell the team! Sell the team!”
“It’s understandable,” McCaskey responded Tuesday. “Our fans are passionate. They’re incredibly frustrated. They wanted to make their voices heard.”
More significantly, however — and at a very critical time for the franchise — the Bears’ credibility remains shaky around the league with the organization’s year-after-year failures plus the consistent disorder that seems to swirl inside Halas Hall, leaving some to wonder whether the organization will ever attain the stability required to put together a run of sustained success.
“All in all, that’s a sloppy organization,” one league source said. “And it’s been that way for a while.”
So how can the Bears change? And will they? McCaskey was pressed Tuesday to explain why this search process might be different and why’s he’s confident it can produce better results than the team’s searches in 2012 (GM), 2013 (head coach), 2015 (GM and head coach), 2018 (head coach) and 2022 (GM and head coach).
“Well,” McCaskey said, “Ryan has the benefit of his experience. And he has the benefit of guidance from Kevin, who has been through this process before. So we’re hoping for a better result.”
Fingers crossed.
Ryan, of course, is general manager Ryan Poles, whose three seasons at Halas Hall have resulted in three last-place finishes and losses in 71% of the team’s games. Poles also hired Matt Eberflus as his head coach in 2022, stuck with Eberflus after a down-up-and-sort-of-down-again 2023 season and then assisted with an offensive coordinator search last winter that brought the Bears Shane Waldron.
Waldron only made it through Week 10 of his first season before he was fired. And his dismissal came just 17 days before Eberflus’, with the Bears proving totally negligent with their rookie-year development plan for quarterback Caleb Williams.
And that Kevin whom McCaskey mentioned? Well, that’s Bears President/CEO Kevin Warren, whose NFL journey began in the early 1990s as an agent and has included subsequent stints with the St. Louis Rams, Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings in roles ranging from vice president of player programs to senior vice president of business operations to chief operating officer.
Warren was in Minnesota as the chief administrative officer and executive vice president of legal affairs when that franchise hired Mike Zimmer as head coach in 2014.
“One attribute (that’s important),” he said, “is to go into the search without your mind made up. I think that’s the thing I learned the most. You need to go into these searches wide open and be able to look at it from a global standpoint.”
This Bears search, which is definitely wide open as it begins, ultimately will be judged on the final hire. And that next leader for the organization will need at least two and probably three seasons before his performance can be fairly reviewed. Thus it’s important to leave room for the possibility that the Bears, with Poles as their point guard and Warren coaching from the side, can create their path to the hoop and deliver a resounding slam dunk.
Still, there has been worry within some league circles that the Bears have jumped into yet another critical hiring cycle like a blindfolded third grader hoping to break open the birthday party piñata. Swing hard and in every direction and hope for the big break.
To the Bears, their North Pole-like scroll of interviewees may feel like necessary due diligence and a way to be comprehensive with their vetting process. But to some around the league, it feels excessive and unfocused.
“Sure, it’s incredibly important that you do all of your homework,” one source said. “But there’s a lot of middle ground between being narrowly focused and interviewing only two or three candidates and talking to 15, 16, 17, 18 people.
“There’s no way they believe every person on their list has a legitimate chance to be hired.”
Perhaps the Bears have earned such skepticism, losing their way so frequently that just about everything they do feels a little suspect to outsiders. But in this instance, questions seem justified about the wide net the team has cast; about the formula of their interview process; and about how they will reach their final decision.
Zoom-ing out
It’s quite possible the Bears will end up conducting more interviews for their head coaching vacancy this month than they’ve had head coaches (18) over the first 105 seasons of their history. Think about that for a minute as all these interviews proceed.
The team confirmed its meetings with Aaron Glenn and Ben Johnson on Saturday, adding to a list of completed first-round interviews that includes Mike Vrabel, Drew Petzing, Anthony Weaver, Pete Carroll and Mike Kafka.
Also reportedly in the queue for vetting: Ron Rivera, Thomas Brown, Brian Flores, Todd Monken, Kliff Kingsbury and Joe Brady. Oh, and David Shaw. And Arthur Smith. And Matt Campbell. And Vance Joseph.
In total, 18 names have been connected to the Bears search in some capacity, leaving many around the league wondering if such an expansive search might actually hurt the process.
Said Poles: “We want to make sure that it’s not stressing us out to an extent where we’re not doing quality work.”
One golden rule in the NFL, in which change is inevitable and turnover frequent, is that leaders must always keep an updated short list of top successor options handy for the positions they supervise. For Poles, that means having a menu of head coaching options readily available. In case of emergency. Like, say, if the Bears had to launch their head coach during the season for some reason.
Yet the Bears’ current candidate list is anything but short — even after firing Eberflus way back on Nov. 29. Plus, as one league source noted, Eberflus’ dismissal had seemed inevitable for weeks before that. Months even.
“Remember,” the source said, “those calls for Eberflus’ head were already pretty loud last January. So they definitely had time to prepare and have themselves ready and focused for this search.”
History lesson
Three years ago, as the Bears ran concurrent searches for a new GM and head coach, the team cast lines in many directions. With McCaskey and then-team President Ted Phillips leaning on consultant Bill Polian for guidance, the Bears ultimately spoke with 13 known GM candidates and 10 additional coaching candidates before uniting with Poles, who then hired Eberflus.
By now, it’s well known that particular pairing didn’t work out. And if, in the interest of thoroughness, the Bears used those meetings with at least 23 applicants to gain deeper insight into big-picture issues across the league and to update their best-practices manual for crucial decisions, that gained knowledge did little to improve the team’s on-field product over the past three seasons.
Perhaps that wisdom — with McCaskey as the only 2022 holdover on the search-party interview panel — can be applied to this search. But even as that wide-net process was unfolding three years ago, several folks with knowledge of the dynamics felt unsettled, sensing that the Bears were just “winging it” to some degree.
Several candidates expressed dismay that the virtual-interview format — which has become much more common for teams across the NFL in the post-COVID-19 era — hadn’t really offered a full opportunity for connection. Some coaches felt as if they were partaking in superficial job-fair-like introductions rather than having the stage to sell themselves and their comprehensive vision for such a big job inside a big market.
Currently, there are also concerns that, for teams flooding themselves with interviews this month, the meetings ultimately may blur together with the intel-gathering process becoming muddied and overly complex.
One point of emphasis within league circles is that the leaders of any team using videoconferencing to propel their search as the Bears are doing should work to keep an intensely heightened focus during virtual interviews. But that can prove difficult inside of an interaction format that naturally creates temptation to become distracted or disengaged.
“You need to stay ‘on,’ ” the source said. “And you need to have sharp instincts for who’s being candid with you and who’s not. That’s harder to decipher over a computer. It just is.”
Another source remained adamant that, for a team such as the Bears, the scattershot approach to this search must allow allow ample time for a second round of interviews in which at least four and up to six finalists are given in-person opportunities to meet. And not just with an in-and-out carwash approach but through a multiple-day interaction that truly reveals a candidate’s personality, people skills and ability to move throughout the building.
“Everyone can be at their very best for one day,” the source said. “But you’re going to show more of who you really are on the second day. For better or worse. … When you’re hiring a general manger or a head coach, you can’t miss on that. You can’t. The stakes are too high.”
Standard bearer
So what exactly are the Bears looking for right now? Poles offered a shortened checklist Tuesday of qualities he’s eager to identify in the candidates.
- Clear vision.
- A developmental mindset.
- Strong game management.
- A plan to develop a quarterback.
A little while later, Warren listed six other attributes on his radar: discipline, accountability, work ethic, vision, foresight, leadership skills.
Add those traits to the picture painted Dec. 1 when Warren vocalized that he wants to find a new coach who “has extremely high standards; who is tough; who is demanding; who is bright; who has attention to detail; who seeks and will win championships; who creates an environment of accountability; who’s creative; who’s intelligent; who’s decisive” and the Bears, at a minimum, have a prerequisite checklist that should help guide them.
“There are standards we have to set,” Warren reiterated Tuesday. “And I think we have to commit to those standards and hold each other accountable. Because if people start to deviate and justify a reason to go below the standard, we’ll have to say: ‘The standard is the standard.’ It’s not about the person. It’s about the standard. And once we set that standard and the process — which we have done — it will become clear who the candidates are who meet that standard.”
Vision quest
The Bears must also stay prepared for their Q-and-A sessions to be flipped around as candidates gather a sense of the current dynamics inside Halas Hall.
To that end, coaching candidates will likely be looking to better understand the power dynamics within the organization. Those queries, one league executive stressed, are oftentimes less about power and more so about “clarity of vision and unity of vision.”
In other words, final-decision authority may be less important to certain candidates as long as they believe in the processes the organization has established to reach those final decisions.
One GM encouraged the Bears to survey the playoff landscape and truly understand what they’re seeing in the 14 coaches who made the postseason. There are longtime established coaching stars — from Andy Reid to Sean Payton to Sean McVay to Mike Tomlin to Jim and John Harbaugh.
There are on-the-rise standouts. (See: Dan Campbell, Kevin O’Connell and DeMeco Ryans.)
There are offensive-minded guys and defensive-minded guys and bright play callers and sharp overseers.
In totality, though, there is a profile of leadership that comes to the forefront.
“You’re looking for someone who can lead your entire organization,” the GM said, “and someone who can truly keep everything and everyone on track when things get rough. That’s a big deal and a bigger deal than we all probably realize. Anyone can coach when things are rolling.”
Added another league source: “Find yourself someone who is a top-tier communicator, someone who motivates, someone who meets players where they are and has a knack for saying the right things at the right time. But don’t get that confused either. Leaders of men don’t have to be loud and (macho). You just need to be in control. You need to offer discipline and prove you care and connect in a way where your players are willing to maximize their talents for you.”
Sounds simple, right?
The Bears are now deep into their process and plowing through the first wave of interviews. In the coming weeks, their search will intensify and, ideally, become more personal.
The perks of landing the right coach are immeasurable. Just ask the NFC North champion Detroit Lions, who went 30 years between division titles and 32 seasons between playoff victories before Dan Campbell, under the supervision of GM Brad Holmes, changed everything.
Now the Lions are Super Bowl front-runners and have ditched their reputation as a losing laughingstock.
But the danger of swinging and missing with a hiring process like this one? Well, Chicago is used to that by now and may have itself prepared for the Bears be right back here in a couple of years.