As the day progresses, I’ll be providing commentary on everything via Twitter. If you don’t follow DBB on Twitter you can do so by CLICKING HERE or follow on the right rail —->.
Sacked.
As the day progresses, I’ll be providing commentary on everything via Twitter. If you don’t follow DBB on Twitter you can do so by CLICKING HERE or follow on the right rail —->.
If Marc Trestman is not fired as head coach of the Chicago Bears before the rye toast of Chicagoland browns Monday morning, the panic will be palpable.
FATHER: He can’t possibly be back, can he?
SON: No. It’s not possible.
FATHER: Why haven’t they fired him yet?
SON: They will…(wipes sweat from his brow)…they have to…
FATHER: You want butter?
SON: Jam.
Trestman’s first year as Bears head coach was defined by an explosiveness on offense never before seen from the city of Chicago’s football team. While balancing the worst defense in the history of the organization the Bears offense managed to guide the club to a .500 record, giving them an opportunity to win a division title on the final week of the season. (A game they lost purely by mental breakdowns on the defensive side of the ball.) It seemed in Marc Trestman the Bears had found their guy.
Here were the four reasons I liked the hiring of Marc Trestman in January of 2013:
I have nothing to write about the Chicago Bears for the next forty-eight hours. Hopefully. Seriously, I’m getting bored writing incessantly about how much of a train wreck the Bears organization has been in 2014. Monday can’t come soon enough. So instead, the five best Christmas movies of all-time:
Yes, the Bears should trade Jay Cutler if the new head coach would like to move in a different direction at the position. The Bears can no longer plan organizationally around a player so enigmatic.The next head coach needs to be empowered moving forward.
No, the Bears shouldn’t trade Jay Cutler just because they are tired of him. When the Bears don’t ask Cutler to throw it 40 times and put up 30 points, he’s been a winning player. The numbers completely support that. Bears won’t find better over next two seasons.
(1) The city, the people walking up and down the sidewalks, universally hate Jay Cutler and it is ENTIRELY about his body language, demeanor. All of those debates and articles I have scoffed at for years are having a dramatic impact, especially on those who are more casually fans. I write columns disparaging folks like Rosenbloom and Haugh. Those columns are met with, “Why bother? Those are idiots!” Guess what? Those are the columns permeating the city.
(2) Yes there were thousands of Lions fans in attendance but I couldn’t be more impressed with the Bears fans at Soldier Field Sunday. You could feel the desperation. They wanted to stand. They wanted to shout. And when the game presented them opportunities to do so they leapt to their feet and blew out their voices. On a day where the Bears handed out the most ridiculous pin in football history (see above) Bears fans showed why they deserve to be appreciated.
Cutting or trading Jay Cutler makes no sense – fiscally or footbally (deal with it, I am using that as an adverb). The Bears should absolutely be looking for the future at the position but in the meantime you don’t throw away the type of production Cutler provides from the quarterback position. Fans and media seem to believe keeping Cutler and looking to the position in the coming drafts are mutually exclusive concepts. They are not. But if the Bears decide to make a move away from Cutler without a replacement in place they could be doomed to another decade of nightmares at the position.
Mike Silver spoke with Aaron Rodgers regarding Bears offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer and all that stuff he did. (To read the entire worthwhile piece, CLICK HERE.) An excerpt:
“I would have a major problem if somebody said something like that,” Rodgers said Tuesday during an interview at Lambeau Field. “I think anybody that plays the position, you can’t help but empathize with Jay for that situation. You talk all the time about being connected, being a unit, believing in each other. But if you have unnamed sources, people out there cutting you down, and then you find out it’s the person calling the plays — that would be really hard to deal with, to look at him the same way.”
Though Kromer reportedly apologized to Cutler — and the quarterback later said he “wasn’t angry” with his coordinator and that the team was in a “better place” following the meeting in question — Rodgers was far less forgiving.
“I felt for Jay that he was having to deal with that,” Rodgers said. “And I was surprised that the coach came out and admitted that it was him. I think, in general, unnamed sources are pretty gutless. But then he comes out and admits it was him. I don’t think he deserves any credit for that, but it was interesting that he did.”
I have listened to all the reasons Aaron Kromer still has a job on Marc Trestman’s staff. Not one of those reasons is good enough. But this is what happens when your head coach is not a leader of men. He forgives treasonous behavior to avoid disruption.
Here is a text I received from a former Bears player when I asked him how he’d respond to the Kromer admission: “I would never take a word he said seriously again”. Sounds like the perfect coach for the 2014 Bears.
Quick timeline…
Last week Aaron Kromer admitted to an act that would have led to his excommunication from 31 of the 32 NFL coaching staffs. But Marc Trestman, ever the genteel humanitarian, wrapped his arms around a buddy and said, “People make mistakes. How about some cocoa over at my place?”
After that decision GM Phil Emery made clear in pre-Saints game comments the actions of Kromer (a) infuriated him and (b) would have been handled differently were he to have the power to handle them. Disciplining coaches does not come under the purview of the GM, Emery told us. That’s the head coach’s responsibility.
Now comes Wednesday night and the LEAK HEARD ROUND THE LEAGUE. Jay Cutler, the handsome man paid handsomely by Emery to be his franchise quarterback, was benched by the head coach in favor of Jimmy Clausen, a wretched quarterback with only one more win than me in the NFL. No word from coaches or front office alike led to a night and morning worth of speculation about last gasps from drowning coaches, $16M in injury settlements, Ken Whisenhunt trades…etc.
From the Twitter feed of Adam Hoge:
So Kromer doesn’t get fired, but Cutler gets benched? Trestman: “That’s a completely … That’s a question that I’m not going to answer.”
Of course that is a question Trestman is not going to answer. How can he answer it? What he was going to say is these issues are completely separate and he’s right. One individual admitted to publicly stabbing a player in the back. The other individual didn’t play well. He chose to fire the one who will have no impact on his future coaching career.
