The hidden reasons for the Chicago Bears failures in 2023
The owners of the Chicago Bears should also be held accountable
Of course, when pointing fingers at who is to blame for the Bears' latest crisis, we need to include their owners. The McCaskey clan decision-makers over the years have made many poor to awful decisions. The one that stands out the most to me was when they were all set to hire Bruce Arians but did not because he wanted to replace, defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli with Todd Bowles. Instead Bears fans had to suffer through the Mark Trestman era.
Digging deep, this is what I believe is at the heart of their many bad hiring decisions. The McCaskeys, in a big way, lack confidence in their own decision-making abilities to do what is best for their beloved Bears. They always seek and use someone they know to oversee their search for general manager candidates. Most recently, they used Bill Polian when they hired Ryan Poles. In 2014 they used Ernie Accorsi to oversee their general manager search. This resulted in the hiring of Ryan Pace. Interestingly, after Ryan Pace was hired Ernie Accorsi convinced the McCaskeys to hire John Fox as their head coach over Ryan Pace's objections to this hire.
Let's dig deeper into the source of why the McCaskeys lack confidence in making their own decisions for the Bears' most important hires. This is all pointing to the grandmaster of the Bears, George Halas. He did not approve of his only daughter, Virginia, marrying Ed McCaskey. George Halas was grooming his son, Mugsy Halas, to take over the team when he retired. However, sadly, Mugsy died in 1979 at the age of 54.
Given their apparent lack of faith in themselves, it is reasonable to conclude George Halas did not give his grandchildren, the children of Ed and Virginia McCaskey any hands-on training in running an NFL franchise. I feel a degree of compassion for the McCaskeys given all this. It seems to me most of us can relate to coping with some degree of dysfunction within our own families and the subsequent long-term effects it can have on us.
If I was a friend advising the McCaskeys this is what I would suggest to them. Make a list of all their hiring decisions and do your best with help from those you trust to identify why these decisions failed. Then the next time you have to hire a general manager use this research as a guide to hiring a general manager instead of mainly relying on someone outside of your organization to make this important decision.
In essence, use your own informed intelligence to make your best judgment in making this decision. Of course, having a smart confident man like Kevin Warren as the president and CEO of the Bears will likely stop the Bears owners from using an outsider to make an executive type of decision that includes hiring general managers and head coaches. Hopefully, Kevin Warren will play a big part in stopping the Bears organization from making another bad hire in the future.
When they hired Ryan Poles, George McCaskey very much relied on the advice of Bill Polian in determining who would be the next Bears GM. The elements of their search for a GM and a head coach were more than a little layered but not in a good way. They interviewed Matt Eberflus for head coach before they interviewed Ryan Poles for general manager. Then add this to the mix. Ryan Poles, Matt Eberflus, and Luke Getsy all have the same agent.
That Polian liked Matt Eberflus for the head coach job is not surprising. Eberflus is married to the Cover 2 defense. As the Colts, general manager, Polian hired Tony Dungy, the inventor of the Cover 2 and they won a Super Bowl together by beating the Bears. This leads me to believe that given Polian's influence, the Bears chose Ryan Poles over other GM candidates in good part because Poles would be more than willing to hire Eberflus as the Bears' head coach.
If Bill Polian and George McCaskey were thinking that Matt Eberflus was their best choice for the head coach job in good part because he was a Cover-2 guy, they did not take this matter into account. The big difference between Tony Dungy's team and the current Bears is the Colts had a future HOF QB in Peyton Manning.
They also had an experienced offensive coordinator in Jim Caldwell who knew how to bring out the best in his QB. I can see where Eberflus probably showed all involved that he had some good leadership skills. Admittedly, he has shown good leadership skills in how he got the Bears team to buy into his, not so easy to embrace, H.I.T.S. principles.