The Chicago Bears might need to kick the tires on this old trend at HC

The Chicago Bears need to hire a GM. End of the article. I was just kidding. Seriously though, much of our speculation and hope rides on whoever the Chicago Bears hire at general manager. Some media members don’t exactly want the Chicago Bears to hire a first-time head coach. Adam Kaplan and Greg Gabriel have suggested a retread.

I thought I would dig and see why they could employ a retreaded head coach over that new car smell coach. Instead of looking at coaches who have gotten second chances in the NFL, I wanted to see what former Chicago Bears head coaches got second chances and what they did with those teams. Without going back too far, the coaches are:

• Lovie Smith
• Dick Jauron
• Dave Wannstedt
• Mike Ditka
• Neil Armstrong
• Jack Pardee

Matt Nagy, for obvious reasons, isn’t on this list. John Fox was a retread head coach. And Marc Trestman was just…Ummm no. Lovie Smith had two seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. To me, that wasn’t enough time to establish his unique principles for football.

Dick Jauron minus his Nagy year was a flop for the Chicago Bears but was average for the Buffalo Bills after a terrible five games with the Detriot Lions. Maybe he figured things out a bit too late to get another shot in the NFL. Dave Wannstedt (my favorite Bears head coach of all time) was average with his first four seasons. Wannstedt flammed out his last two seasons but rebounded after not running the show for two years with the Miami Dolphins. More on him later.

Coach Ditka — one of the most famous head coaches in Chicago Bears history. He was outstanding for the team. There was plenty of chaos for him though, which ultimately led to that terrible 1992 season.

His three years with the New Orleans Saints were awful. The Ricky Williams trade was horrible. I think he might have been living in “what could be if I rebuilt that team like my Super Bowl contender.” Things were never the same in the Crawfish town. Neil Armstrong was not a head coach in the NFL after 1981, and Jack Pardee, like Wannstedt, did some good things with his second chance (well, third chance).

Jack Pardee left for Washington and became the AP coach of the year in 1979. Oddly, he was let go the next season and went to the Houston Oilers and rocked it. Pardee made the playoffs four years in a row from 1990 to 1993. Why Washington let him go is beyond me. The point is, he became a winner.

Wannstedt, in today’s playoff formation, would have done the same. Back-to-back 11-win seasons before falling to 9-7 his third year. Wannstedt rebounded to a 10-win season but missed the playoffs in 2003. Maybe, Gabriel and Kaplan are on to something. We Chicago Bears fans just want to get back to winning ways and stay consistent for a while.

Maybe a coach like Todd Bowles, Brian Flores, Leslie Frazier, Doug Pederson, or Jim Caldwell is the answer to the Chicago Bears’ problems. It still doesn’t matter until the team hires a general manager to make sure they like, respect, and work together with that head coach. The Chicago Bears fan base should be open to all ideas at this point. I know I am.