The Chicago Bears management dream team for 2022
As the long and winding road of the Chicago Bears’ search for a general manager and a new head coach continues, here are my choices for their dream team. Reggie McKenzie as the Chicago Bears President, Eliot Wolf as general manager and Byron Leftwich as head coach. In this article, I do a deep dive that includes a number of compelling reasons why Byron Leftwich should clearly be the Bears’ top choice for their next head coach.
To start with, Leftwich has the most obvious combination more than any other candidate of the three important traits needed for a coach to become a great head coach. He is a natural leader that commands respect. Bruce Arians has confirmed this on many occasions. He is intelligent. It takes real smarts to successfully run the vertical offense he and Arians run in this age of sophisticated defenses. The hardest trait to find is that he is courageous.
The Chicago Bears should consider hiring this management dream team
It takes courage to be an aggressive play-caller which he is. However, what really separates Leftwich from the pack is his championship pedigree. He was the backup to Big Ben in Pittsburgh when they won the Super Bowl in 2008. Last season as their offensive coordinator, the Bucs won the Super Bowl. This season wasn’t quite as magical, but the team adjusted after going down 27-3 to come back and nearly win the game. Rumors are if/when Leftwich leaves, Bruce Arians will take playcalling back over.
A lot of very good defensive coordinators and offensive coordinators who have gone on to be head coaches fail because of this. They insist on having a play-it-safe overview of their offenses. This has left a number of these failed head coaches knocking on the door of greatness but not opening it. Byron Leftwich, with his broad shoulders, is destined to push the door open that leads to greatness and become a Super Bowl winner as a head coach.
Pushing that door open takes courage. The fact Leftwich is gutsy is evidenced by the type of offense he has mastered. He has avoided the biggest trap offensive coordinators fall into. That is not to be seduced into being overly concerned with not making turnovers at great expense to running a great offense. All of this is covered in detail in the article posted on January 15th.