Marc Trestman Week 1 Review
By Coach Boss
Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports
In week one of the 2013 NFL regular season Coach Trestman made his NFL Head Coaching debut. Things did not go as many had hoped in the first two quarters and the Bears found themselves down 14-10 at halftime.
The Bears appeared to make the necessary halftime adjustments and ended up winning 24-21.
What I find interesting is the correlation between the game and the first paragraph of the introduction of Trestman’s book. It reads:
"During the course of a football game, halftime is an opportunity to briefly “re-assess” your game plan. Have we seen what we expected or planned to see? If so, we stick with the plan with maybe a few minor adjustments that can be simply communicated and understood. But, with many game plans, things happen in the first half where changes are necessary because things don’t always go as planned. Sometimes, you can make an adjustment that can have a profound effect on the game’s result."
One of the, if not the biggest, decisions Trestman made during the game was to go for it on 4th and 1 in the 4th quarter. Not only did he decide to go for it, but the play call was a run by Matt Forte to the rookie right side of the line. In years past, Forte would have been replaced by Michael Bush in short yardage situations and the Bears would have run between the tackles. I don’t know if the play was designed to get outside the tackle box or not but it did and the Bears picked up a critical first down.
Some people will question the burning of two timeouts early in the game in the first half; thankfully that did not come back to bite the Bears in the butt like it did the Bengals later in the game. Although I am concerned, I am not that concerned; it was the first game of the season running a brand new offense, with a lot of new faces. Things like this are bound to happen. I’ll chalk those up to growing pains…for now.
What I saw was an offense that started slow and didn’t panic. I also saw a disciplined team that didn’t make mental mistakes. When was the last time the Bears didn’t have a pre-snap penalty, didn’t give up a sack, and came back from a double digit second half deficit? In the same game no less.
I don’t remember all of these things taking place in the same game since I really started to watch the team closely 15 years ago.
According to the guys at the Carmen and Jurko show; Lovie Smith was 14-47 when losing at halftime. How is that for an interesting tid bit to chew on after what we saw on Sunday?
I see the defense beginning to trust the offense and a group of men beginning to trust each other to become a real team.
It may be only one week, but the new Coach seems to have his team headed in the right direction.