The honeymoon stage has quickly ended for Chicago Bears' offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
Outside of individual growth from Caleb Williams, there hasn't been a single thing that fans could point to during the first three weeks of the season and say that the Bears' offense is on the right track.
From a mere look at the team's box score of the loss to the Indianapolis Colts this past Sunday, one might see Caleb Williams throwing for over 360 passing yards and Rome Odunze having over 100 receiving yards as something that has the team moving in the right direction. What's missing in the box score is that the yardage that Williams and Odunze accumulated was in spite of Waldron's inept strategy.
A strategy that has already started to be questioned by those within the Bears' offense. It has all the making of the Bears getting another offensive coordinator hire wrong. That is why, as a Bears fan, the following stat shared by Mark Potash is tough to see.
Six of the candidates for the #Bears' offensive coordinator position were hired as an OC in the NFL. The early update ... 🤔 pic.twitter.com/lslHGKiTmI
— Mark Potash (@MarkPotash) September 25, 2024
Early stats confirm the Bears picked the worst of the offensive coordinator candidates they spoke with.
For a season that was supposed to represent Williams being in the best position a rookie quarterback has ever been in, Waldron and the offensive line are big reasons why the team has looked like a mess as it enters Week 4.
Of all the candidates listed by Potash's finding, Kliff Kingsbury is the one that should be circled. If the goal was making Williams as comfortable as possible, the logical thing would have been to hire his USC quarterback coach as the team's new offensive coordinator. Say what you want about Kingsbury's time as the head of the Arizona Cardinals, he remains one of the best offensive minds in football. The early success of Jayden Daniels is proof of that. Instead, the Bears settled for a coordinator who Seattle was glad to discard.