During his first team meeting as the new offensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears on Wednesday morning, Thomas Brown articulated his vision for the week, offered some ready-made adjustments for the team’s struggling offense and spoke with purpose about what will be needed to keep this roller-coaster season from careening off the track.
Make no mistake, a far different energy pulsed through the air at Halas Hall, a palpable passion that Bears players felt ready to plug right into.
“To hear him up there in front of the whole team, it was amazing,” receiver DJ Moore said. “He brings a lot of juice, a lot of energy.”
Added center Coleman Shelton: “He definitely has a presence and an aura about him. Which is great. It’s about exuding confidence, right? We want to go out there and do our thing and, with him, it’s ‘This is how we’re going to do it.’ He’s very matter of fact.”
To a large degree, presence matters. Direction matters.
Now the Bears are praying that Brown’s charisma and infectious “juice” can, at the very least, give them a short-term lift in the fight to save their season.
In the middle of a three-game losing streak and in the wake of Tuesday’s firing of offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, the Bears find themselves back at the intersection of Dysfunction and Desperation with a season that is slipping away far too quickly.
Their immediate challenge is to steady themselves enough to compete Sunday against the rival Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field. But so many bigger-picture dynamics have been hovering this week, most notably with the suddenly stalled development of rookie quarterback Caleb Williams and the needed evolution of the offense.
On Tuesday, the toolbox was thrust into Brown’s chest with a directive: “Please help fix this!”
No pressure, right?
“Pressure to me is a privilege,” Brown said. “That means people expect something positive from you. I embrace that and I’m excited about the opportunity. That comes with the territory in this job. Honestly, if you don’t want that you should probably do something else.”
‘Too nice of a guy’
Throughout the week, Bears players tried to summarize what went wrong under Waldron’s watch and what may be better under Brown as a talent-stocked offense tries to reach its potential. Much of the messaging has centered around tone, around style, around Brown’s ability to be direct and demanding while creating unwavering standards for how the offense needs to operate.
“Everybody in here loves TB,” veteran tight end Marcedes Lewis said. “Really good dude. Great energy. And he’s a dude, right? That should bring some juice to the offense.”
Added receiver Keenan Allen: “He’s just more of a don’t-take-(BS) type of guy. Won’t accept it either. So we’ll see how it goes.”
As much conviction as the Bears had in Waldron’s teaching ability and willingness to adapt when they hired him last winter, what general manager Ryan Poles and coach Matt Eberflus miscalculated was how Waldron’s mild and frequently nervy personality would resonate with players and how he might intervene if and when expectations weren’t being met.
As it turns out, Waldron struggled across both fronts with Allen bluntly labeling the former coordinator “too nice of a guy” on Wednesday afternoon.
“I think during OTAs and training camp, he kind of fell into a trap of letting things go, not holding people accountable,” Allen said. “Obviously those things lead to a slippery slope.”
Those direct comments, delivered by a 12th-year veteran and six-time Pro Bowl honoree, were arguably the most pointed in expressing what other leaders have been hinting at since September — that the Bears had become too lax in establishing and maintaining their standards of how to practice, prepare and play.
Following Sunday’s embarrassing 19-3 home loss to the New England Patriots, receiver DJ Moore was flummoxed by how quickly the offense’s production had fallen off the cliff and again called for greater attention to detail throughout the practice week.
“I don’t know, man,” Moore said. “I can’t put it into words. It’s just the details of things. We have to go back and see what was working (last month) and bring it forth now and run with it. … Everybody needs to be held accountable throughout practice. Even if it’s like a little flinch for a false start, you’ve got to come back (and do it over). Or if it’s some detail with me or any of the other receivers, we have to run it back and get on that person.
“That’s happening. But I think we have to take it to another level.”
Moore’s sentiments were an echo of what Lewis expressed in Week 4 when he urged Waldron to be firmer with every offensive player, warning the coordinator not to operate as if he were walking on eggshells.
“Without pointing out certain people,” Lewis said, “with this game, man, you either expose others or you get exposed. You don’t have room to not be doing your thing. … From the oldest guy in the room – being me – to the youngest guy, don’t feel like you can’t coach us.
“I want to be coached. I want to be great. This is not for play. This is our job. It’s a highly stressful, production-based business and we’ve all got to be doing the same things or everybody gets fired.”
Waldron learned that lesson the hard way. Now Brown’s intention is to steer the Bears back on course.
Brown described himself this week as “a pretty direct person” who believes he can make immediate adjustments to get things functioning again.
“To me it’s about clear, open and honest communication,” Brown said. “I’m not going to dance around certain topics or even (certain) individuals when it comes to addressing specific needs. But I’m also not alleviating pressure off us coaches to get stuff right.
“Again, it’s going to be a collaborative effort with all eyes and all focus on going forward to get us better.”
Hello, my name is …
Amid all the transition chaos, there was one particularly startling record scratch at Halas Hall. It came Wednesday when Williams asserted that his connection with Brown remains very much in the infancy stage.
“We haven’t really talked much throughout this time,” Williams said. “Just because we haven’t been in the position to be having many conversations.”
Trust matters. Relationships matter. Yet suddenly the Bears quarterback has been left in a precarious position during a trying stretch of his rookie season, needing to muster as much belief as he possibly can in a new play-caller with whom he hasn’t yet created a significant bond.
To be clear, that was by design and with good intentions, when Eberflus and Poles established a clear chain of command for Williams over the offseason, tabbing Waldron and quarterbacks coach Kerry Joseph to be the QB’s direct points of contact.
“It’s not like no one else can look at him and talk to him,” Poles told the Tribune in the spring. “But we’re going to be very intentional with limiting the voices for him. Because the last thing you want for a young quarterback is to have a thousand different people sharing different ideas. That can get really confusing.”
That was an admirable strategy but one that banked on Waldron lasting at least an entire season. Alas …
Now it’s Brown’s obligation to quickly establish his connection with Williams. And while that may seem like a tall order this deep into the season and at such a tension-filled juncture, Joseph believes the click can come quickly.
“With Thomas’ command, his voice, his attention to detail, we’re all going to fall in line from that,” Joseph said. “And Caleb is so strong mentally that he will be able to make that adjustment. He already has.”
‘It didn’t last’
It was only five Sundays ago that Williams walked into a jam-packed news conference at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with an adrenaline rush and a surge in pride. On that afternoon, the quarterback completed 23 of 29 passes for 226 yards and four touchdowns. His worst error of the day was a poorly thrown interception on a play-action deep shot to Moore in the second quarter. But the rookie responded by guiding four consecutive touchdown drives in a 35-16 win.
Confidence matters. Flow matters.
Whomever that quarterback was — that fearless, energized, locked-in playmaker — he has been sorely missing during this three-game losing streak. During the skid, Williams’ funk has been undeniable. He has had a .505 completion percentage with a 64.7 passer rating.
Sacked 18 times. Zero touchdown passes.
The Bears offense has gone 23 possessions since its last touchdown and managed only two end-zone trips in 34 drives since retuning from London.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Allen noted, that week of preparation in the United Kingdom may have been one of the Bears’ sharpest all season.
“There was a lot of urgency,” he said. “Just getting lined up, knowing the game plan. I think (Shane) had used the term ‘mastering the game plan.’ For whatever reason, after that week it didn’t last.”
Still, there’s also a sense in the locker room that another breakthrough can occur based on the surge the offense experienced during the three-game winning streak that preceded this skid.
“I guess the way I look at it is that I know it’s in there,” Shelton said. “These past few weeks, kind of everywhere, it feels like ‘We’ve got to get this going. We’ve got to get it going.’ But we also know we can. That’s the thing. We have done it. We have shown it.”
Added Allen: “That’s definitely important. When you see that and you know that, we just have to go out there and execute and stay on that high horse we were riding before. We can’t just let negative things weigh us down.”
Brain games
Perhaps Williams has been experiencing a significant crisis of confidence, feeling the weight of his struggles in the middle of NFL-level turbulence for the first time. Perhaps he is now also managing the human nature urge to press in order to break through the funk. Perhaps he is getting a sobering reality check of the everyday demands that come with chasing success at this level.
From Joseph’s vantage point, he sees a young quarterback who has struggled recently and then consequently experienced pronounced frustrations from those struggles. The goal is for Williams to exhale, to simplify things, to slow everything down.
“It can happen to any quarterback,” Joseph said. “If things are not going well, I don’t care who you are, if you get hit a few times, your eyes start to speed up a little bit. You start to feel people around you.”
One outside notion has been that Williams has grown uncharacteristically cautious, perhaps fearful of making overly aggressive decisions that may result in mistakes. But Allen countered that premise, suggesting that one of the most important lessons for any NFL quarterback is understanding how valuable forward momentum is, no matter how small a gain a play might offer.
“It’s just being able to take your profits,” Allen said. “Completions are the name of the game. Anytime we’re going backwards, it gets tough.”
Added Joseph: “It’s rhythm and timing and getting the ball out of our hands and into the playmakers’ hands. If your No. 1 is open, let’s get it to him. We continue to talk about that. And when we do that, now those plays become unsackable.”
That’s one area to monitor Sunday. Just as the Bears also will be watching to see if Williams can be more successful than he has been in recent weeks in understanding how to marry the play that has been called for him with the defense he’s facing.
Said Moore: “It’s just knowing the looks that we get from watching film and then going out there and really executing from what we see with the play call that came in. It’s just for Caleb to be on the same page with everybody out there.”
Some of that, of course, will hinge on the flow Brown can create calling plays. He will get his first opportunity Sunday upstairs at Soldier Field.
Tight end Cole Kmet is convinced Brown’s vision will create a spark. And he believes the new coordinator’s demeanor can also fuel the Bears’ on-field production.
“I think it’s about getting the full buy-in for whatever he has in the game plan — whether that be with the run scheme or the pass concepts — so we can go play fast and play physical and do our thing out there,” Kmet said. “I think Thomas brings a good fresh perspective.”
Still, perspective must be backed by production. And production will stem directly from the connection the new coordinator and his young quarterback are able to create. Brown’s more demanding approach already has altered the dynamics for Williams. But big questions must still be answered on how the rookie will respond.
“I put no limitations on our success at all,” Brown said. “The goal is to not focus as much on being perfect but on chasing excellence every single day. So that’s our goal. That’s our focus — to prepare the right way and to go play in the game the right way.”
The clock is ticking.
