Kevin Warren was expected to be a significant upgrade over Ted Phillips, but that wasn’t as clear as it needed to be Monday.
Phillips, the earnest, loyal McCaskey soldier and one-time Bears contract negotiator who served as the team’s president from 1999-2023, was revered by George McCaskey (“I trust Ted implicitly.”), but loathed by Bears fans who rolled their eyes at Phillips’ sometimes confounding post-season analysis that reminded Bears fans how little the franchise’s leadership was rooted in football.
Like after the 2020 season, when the Bears retained general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy. “Have we gotten the quarterback situation completely right? No. Have we won enough games? No. But everything else is there.”
Or in 2021, when he fired Pace and Nagy after a 6-11 season that left the Bears with a 34-31 record and no playoff wins in Nagy’s four seasons and a 48-65 record in Pace’s seven. “The hiring of Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy, I don’t regret that,” Phillips said. “They brought a lot to the Bears. Ultimately on the field, the results weren’t where we wanted to be, but they checked a lot of the boxes. You can’t ask for better leaders, you can’t ask for better forward thinkers; you can’t ask for people that gave their all, had great work ethics, were humble, and I’m going to look for a lot of those same qualities.”
The hiring of Warren was supposed to give the Bears top-level leadership that has a better idea of what football leadership is. Under George McCaskey and Phillips, the Bears hired general managers Phil Emery, Pace and Ryan Poles and coaches Marc Trestman, John Fox, Nagy and Matt Eberflus. All of them were just what McCaskey and Phillips were looking for. But all of them were fired — including Eberflus on Friday — with little or nothing to show for it.
In fact, in 13-plus seasons of George McCaskey leadership, the Bears’ 93-130 record is 26th in the NFL in that span. Their two playoff berths are tied for 28th. Their single playoff berth with a winning record (12-4 in 2018) is 31st. Their zero playoff wins are tied for last.
Warren’s authority was clear as he dominated the press conference Monday to finally address Eberflus’ firing last Friday. But he didn’t inspire a lot of confidence that anything was about to change with the next coaching hire. Like when Warren accentuated the bright side of the Eberflus firing. It sounded like he was narrating a Bears public relations video.
“One good thing about challenging times,” he said, “it allows each one of us to become stronger and stronger. To become committed. To become dedicated. To become vibrant. To really understand what it means when we talk about having character and integrity.”
Memo to Kevin Warren: There is no “good thing” about the fifth firing of a head coach in the last 12 years. You got here 20 months ago, but Bears fans have been here forever and don’t want to hear — yet again — how failure is going to lead to success.
As part of a chronically dysfunctional franchise, a newcomer like Warren has to change Halas Hall before it changes him. He doesn’t appear to be winning that battle. He’s the outsider who’s supposed to prevent the Bears from embarrassing episodes, but instead helped facilitate yet another one — Eberflus’ ill-fated, awkward Zoom press conference two hours before he was fired.
“When coach Eberflus had his press conference, we had not made a final decision,” Warren said. “And I think you know the McCaskey family — one thing we stand for is family and integrity and doing it the right way.”
Yes, we definitely know the McCaskey family. And there’s no doubt that “doing it the right way” is what the McCaskeys stand for. But, all too typically, in doing it the right way they did it the wrong way (after firing Lovie Smith in 2012, the Bears did their due diligence and took 16 days to find a new coach, and hired Trestman. The Chiefs, after firing Romeo Crennel the same day the Bears fired Smith, took four days to immediately court and hire Andy Reid.).
With Eberflus’ status clearly in doubt, there’s no way the Bears should have allowed him to hold that press conference before meeting with him. It’s just common sense.
But that’s the problem at Halas Hall. Nobody gets it. Which only adds more doubt that this next process will be any more fruitful than the last five. It’s not hopeless. But DJ Moore had it right when he was asked after the Lions game how the Bears can turn this around.
“A little bit of luck and the football gods,” he said.
2. So far, Warren’s hiring is just another example of how the Bears never get everything aligned. Not only did Warren inherit a GM he didn’t hire, but the Bears hired a president who is dead-set on building the new stadium in Chicago — to replace a president who had everything set up in Arlington Heights. (And the only thing to show for that transaction is the destruction of a world-class horse racing facility.).
Warren already is looking at alternatives to the lakefront site. But until he gets the stadium deal done, his confidence that “we’ll look back on this day and say this was the day that we started pointing in the right direction” rings hollow.
He might end up being right — Caleb Williams can make a coach out of Thomas Brown, a GM out of Poles and a president out of Warren. But right now he has nothing to back up his bravado. We’ve had that spiel many times before, and we get the same press conference on a loop.
3. The demise of Eberflus and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron did nothing to dispel the notion that everyone who walks in Halas Hall becomes a lesser version of himself.
Though Eberflus never established himself as a legitimate head coach, his explanation for the clock-management debacle against the Lions — “I like what we did there” and “I think we handled it the right way” — was still a new low, even for him.
Even Poles looked diminished sitting next to Warren at the dais at Halas Hall on Monday — much less confident and in-charge than when he was with assistant GM Ian Cunningham at previous press conferences.
And after a big win with the trade that brought the Bears Moore and Williams among others and trading for Keenan Allen, Poles has hit the skids — cutting third-round draft pick Velus Jones and $30 million free agent guard Nate Davis, green-lighting the firing of Waldron and firing Eberflus.
It all leaves doubt about the Bears not only finding the right guy, but whether the right guy will be the guy they hired once he arrives at Halas Hall.
4. Bill Polian was a Hall of Fame executive when he was hired to spearhead the Bears’ search for a new general manager and coach in 2022. His coaching hires with the Bills, Panthers and Colts: Marv Levy (Hall of Famer), Dom Capers (NFC title game in his second season), Jim Mora (from 3-13 to 13-3 in his first season), Tony Dungy (Super Bowl XLI winner) and Jim Caldwell (24-8 with Peyton Manning).
His endorsement for the Bears’ head coach: Matt Eberflus. (“The best fit for the Bears,” he said at the time.)
5. The Bright Side Dept.: The Bears are searching for a head coach for the fifth time in the last 13 seasons, but this time the quarterback is the best thing the Bears having going for them. Williams has a 99.2 passer rating (five touchdowns, no interceptions), 19 carries for 142 yards (7.5 average) and 323 total yards per game in three games under Brown as the offensive coordinator. His passer rating is 11th in the NFL in that span.
6. It’s almost as if the Bears would have been better off if Williams were the prima donna quarterback everyone feared — a guy who was too much into himself and his brand and preferred to play for Kliff Kingsbury and would rebel against an offensive coordinator and head coach who weren’t getting the job done.
Maybe the Bears would have hired Kingsbury, or fired Eberflus earlier — perhaps giving the Bears a better chance to salvage this season. That petulance is certainly not ideal — for normal franchises, anyway But it is ironic that Williams was originally feared to be a coach-killing prima donna, and instead is almost too deferential.
Finding a happy medium will be a big key to his development. Maybe now he has enough doubt in the Bears organization to grow into a more demanding role with the next coaching staff.
7. “Thomas Brown is in the best position an interim coach has ever been in” might not be a marketable narrative at this point, with a similar narrative for Caleb Williams as the No. 1 overall pick still finding traction 13 weeks into the season.
But Brown has an opportunity for a rare uptick as an interim coach. Not only is Williams and the offense on an upswing. But the defense, which perhaps not coincidentally withered after the bye, as discontent with Eberflus mounted, still is tied for ninth in the NFL in points allowed.
8. Still, though Brown is an intriguing prospect — an image likely magnified by not being Matt Eberflus — the odds are against Brown as an interim coach.
Of the 48 interim coaches in the last 30 seasons, 12 have earned the permanent job. And only the Cowboys’ Jason Garrett (5-3 as a replacement for 1-7 Wade Phillips in 2010) has had long-term success — 80-64 in nine seasons with three playoff appearances. That’s almost the same record as Lovie Smith with the Bears (81-63, three playoff berths), without the Super Bowl berth.
9. Josh McCown Ex-Bears Player of the Week: Fullback Michael Burton scored on a one-yard run to give the Broncos a 14-10 lead en route to a 41-32 victory over the Browns. It was Burton’s second touchdown in his 10-year NFL career.
10. Bear-ometer — 6-11: at 49ers (W); at Vikings (L); vs. Lions (L); vs. Seahawks (W); at Packers (L).