Chicago Bears Fire Phil Emery and Marc Trestman
Mandatory Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports
The word of the season has been accountability. It came to fruition on Black Monday as the Chicago Bears fired GM Phil Emery and head coach Marc Trestman. Those two have been ultimately accountable for a disastrous 5-11 season. The Bears took a 10-6 team just two years ago and a finalist for the NFC Championship just four years ago and turned it into a laughingstock. Big changes are coming to Chicago.
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Phil Emery was hired in 2011 after Jerry Angelo was dismissed to close the talent gap between the Bears and the Green Bay Packers and the rest of the NFC North. Instead, the gulf in talent has widened. Did you watch the NFC North pseudo-championship game yesterday? Can the Bears compete with either the Packers or the Lions?
A General Manager has two main responsibilities – hire the head coach and find the quarterback. The rest of the pieces are important, but those are the two biggest decisions that a GM will make. One can argue that Emery swung and missed badly on both of his selections. He went through an exhaustive head coaching search that scoured the globe, or at least North America, to find a head coach. He had Bruce Arians in his office and let him walk out. He had Mike McCoy in his office and let him go too. He selected an obscure and quirky quarterback guru in an attempt to fix Jay Cutler.
Trestman came in last season and turned the Bears offense around in short order. The Bears had a real, NFL-caliber offense for the first time in years. But the gig was up just a year later. The rest of the league caught up with Trestman and he showed that he cannot adjust. He showed his true colors. In his introductory press conference, just two years ago, Trestman misspoke and said his team would be “selfish and undisciplined” in a prescient way that makes me wonder if he plays the lottery.
Trestman lost the team at some point between allowing Lance Briggs to skip the first practice of the season to go open a restaurant in his hometown in northern California and not firing Aaron Kromer on the spot when he was found to be the anonymous source for an NFL Network story throwing Jay Cutler under the bus. The team quit at some point between the disappointing home opener loss to the Buffalo Bills and halftime of the second Packers game which found the Bears down 42-0.
Anyone with a pulse knew this could not go on. George McCaskey knew that this could not continue. He made his move today to set the franchise on a new course, to right the ship and bring the Chicago Bears, the charter franchise of the NFL, back to respectability.
The best thing that McCaskey could do is to announce that he’s bringing in a President of Football Operations, someone with a proven track record to find the right people to fill the roles of GM and head coach. We’ll see what happens at the press conference, expected some time later today. Stay tuned.