Ever since the Bears fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron on Tuesday morning, there's been a ton of speculation about why it happened – which is kinda funny considering that it would take less than 30 minutes of watching their tape to get your answer.
But still, the inevitable postmortems are flying around the internet today, with most ranging from "Caleb Williams is regressing" to "literally no one is having fun and Matt Eberflus needed to blame someone for that." The reality is probably somewhere in the middle, or in this specific case, probably extremely both.
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Wednesday's a big day for the media during the NFL regular season, with most teams scheduling their weekly quarterback press conference – along with some of the bigger name vets who don't have to do much media otherwise – for the middle of the week. One of those vets on this specific Wednesday was Keenan Allen, who gave a damning reason for why Waldron's time in Chicago was so short.
Keenan Allen says that Shane Waldron was simply too nice to be a football coach
I asked Keenan Allen why things didn't work with Shane Waldron here at Halas Hall:
— Dan Wiederer (@danwiederer) November 13, 2024
"I would say just probably he was too nice of a guy. I think during OTAs, training camp, he kind of fell into a trap of letting things go, not holding people accountable. Obviously those things…
Good LORD. My social anxiety is acting up just reading this. I cannot imagine what it does to one's morale to be fired because you're too nice of a guy. (Actually I kind of can, but that's getting dark.) I get the gist of what Allen is trying to say – that these are all grown men and professionals that need to be treated as such, especially in moments of accountability – but phrasing it like that is just brutal. It also kinda tracks with the few stories that have come out of Halas Hall recently about certain players getting away with not practicing particularly hard.
It also helps explain some of why the Bears decided to replace him with passing game coordinator Thomas Brown. It's a natural promotion, and Brown has experience as an OC and play-caller from his time with the Panthers, but a major talking point about him over the past couple days has been about how much accountability he demands from his players. So maybe it's not the worst thing in the world that the Bears decided to make the switch when they did. But it may, in fact, be the most embarassing. Shane, I hope you're on a beach somewhere not reading this right now.