Bears Blitz

Published by Bear Heiser on October 1, 2014
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears

Marc Trestman’s tenure as the Chicago Bears head coach has had its ups and downs. He’s done great things with the offense, historical things; while the defense has taken close to 87 steps backward in the 20 games since he took over for Lovie Smith in 2013. Trestman is batting .500, with a 10-10 record.

On the surface, Trestman has done more good than bad. The NFL has turned into a passing league, and the Bears feature one of the better passing games in the league, finishing with the fifth-best aerial attack in the NFL last season and the eighth-best offense overall. As long as the offense continues to score points, everything else, for the most part, will be masked.

Last season, Mel Tucker, Trestman’s hand-picked defensive coordinator, led one of the worst units in the organization’s history. According to NFL.com, the Bears ranked last in the NFL against run, 15th against the pass and, according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required), 24th in pass coverage. But Tucker caught a break when he fired his defensive line coach and linebackers coach. The blame was placed elsewhere. It bought him another season.

General manager Phil Emery went out in the offseason and signed a few big-money talents on defense in linemen Lamarr Houston, Jared Allen and Willie Young, and drafted defensive tackles Ego Ferguson and Will Sutton in the second and third rounds, respectively.

In theory, the defense should have been better in 2014, right?

Well, it has been (somewhat) better. The defense showed signs of improvement in the first three weeks of the season. The Bears were winners of a big road game on each coast, where Tucker’s defense truly stole the show, making us temporarily forget about the debacle that was last season.

But the two wins were a mask. The two wins bought Tucker a few smiles, a few laughs on the sidelines and a heap of praise when rookie Kyle Fuller was picking off passes as if the football were stuffed with money.

Then the Packers game happened—a game in which Green Bay didn’t have to punt one single time. Aaron Rodgers picked apart the defense while barely being touched. It truly was a pathetic effort by a Bears defensive unit that, by now, should be playing every game at a top-15 defensive level, not at the level of a league-worst defense.

Tucker’s job will be in jeopardy if the Bears defense doesn’t show full-scale improvements by year’s end. He will be the guy who takes the fall when all of the fingers are inevitably being pointed.

Trestman would be best suited to find ways to help Tucker scheme better each week. And if it doesn’t work out with Tucker, at least Trestman would be better prepared to help the next guy. There needs to be more cohesion.

Lovie Smith was fired because his teams were god-awful on offense. He went through four offensive coordinators in 10 seasons. Smith did great, great things with the Bears defense, but he spent too much time focusing on that side of the ball and left the offense to coaches whom he would then end up firing.

So, when does Trestman become responsible for what happens on defense? Just asking the obvious.

And at what point does Trestman become responsible for his problems with game management? Asking for a friend. Here’s a list to discuss:

2013

Week 7 vs. Washington Redskins: Trailing 24-17 with 27 seconds remaining before half, the Bears get the ball on their own 35-yard line with two timeouts. Josh McCown takes a knee into half. Trestman clearly didn’t like his team’s chances of getting the ball into field-goal range, at the very least. The Bears went on to lose 45-41.

Week 10 vs. Detroit Lions: Jay Cutler entered the game still on the mend from an early season groin injury. In the second quarter, just before halftime, he added an ankle injury to the mix.

Cutler completed 12 passes on 18 attempts for 148 yards and one touchdown in the first half. The second half was a different story, though. The quarterback was struggling to move around the field. You could tell he was tapped. Cutler connected on just nine passes on 22 attempts for 102 yards in the second half. Trestman didn’t pull him until the Bears took the field for the final drive. That’s when McCown led the Bears on a 10-play, 74-yard drive in 1:42, only to fail on the two-point conversion. The Bears lost 21-19.

Why allow the starter to play the entire game only to pull him before the final drive with the game on the line? Cutler most definitely should have been pulled sooner.

Week 13 vs. Minnesota Vikings: The Bears and Vikings are tied 20-20 with just over four minutes left in overtime. Chicago has the ball on the Vikings’ 29-yard line, 2nd-and-7. What happens next? Robbie Gould trots out to attempt a game-winning 47-yard field goal. Again, this is happening on second down—not third down or fourth down. Gould misses and the Bears go on to lose, 23-20. This also was the game where McCown threw for 355 yards and Alshon Jeffery had 249 receiving yards.

To recap, two of the above transgressions are pretty clumsy. The other two are forgivable, but the similarity of the mistakes is troublesome. The losses to Detroit and Minnesota should have been wins, which would have put the Bears in the postseason.

2014

Week 4 vs. Packers: Trailing 21-17 with 1:05 to go before halftime, the Bears have the ball on their own 20-yard line with all three timeouts.

On first down, Forte runs behind the right guard for 13 yards to the Chicago 33. The Bears use their first timeout with 56 seconds left. On the next play, Forte once again runs behind right guard for five yards to the Chicago 38. Tick. Tick. Tick. Trestman finally calls timeout with 26 seconds left.

The next play is an incomplete pass. The play after that was a 27-yard completion to Martellus Bennett, bringing the Bears down to the Green Bay 36 with 21 seconds remaining. Trestman calls his last timeout. An incomplete pass follows. Nine seconds remain. Cutler drops back and hits Bennett at the 1-yard line as time expires. The drive ends with zero points.

There are many things wrong here. The Packers scored on all three first-half drives. Aaron Rodgers was lights out. Trestman had a chance to cut into the Packers four-point lead when the Bears got the ball back on the final drive of the half. According to Cutler, who appeared Monday on ESPN Chicago’s Waddle and Silvy show, Trestman’s initial plan was to run the clock out:

We were gonna sit on it. We weren’t really trying to get down there. Matt broke off the first run. We decided to give it a go. It didn’t make or break the game. Those points didn’t. The turnovers in the second half. I like the call down there. I thought he was going to get in…They didn’t seem like they were going to stop scoring, either. So if we go incomplete, incomplete, incomplete. Now it’s third-and-10, and we’re looking at punting the ball back to them with 50 seconds left and a short field.

Cutler is right about one thing, and one thing only: Adding seven points to the Bears total doesn’t win them the game. OK, fine. The Bears are an offensive team, no? Trestman is an offensive genius, right? Then why in the world would Trestman want to “sit on it,” as Cutler says? Every possession against the Packers needs to result in points. Let’s not even get his tossing of the challenge flag that cost the team a timeout.

Look, there’s a lot to like about Trestman. The players like him. The media likes him. The fans like him. Good. Great. Awesome. But there’s going to come a day when all of his good deeds will be forgotten and the only thing people will see are his failures, whatever they might be. Sadly, it’s how the business works.

Trestman isn’t in any danger of losing his job, nor should he be. Being a first-time head coach in the NFL cannot be an easy task, especially when you’re the head coach of the Chicago Bears. He deserves a lot of credit for the success of the offense.

There is more to being a head coach, though.

He now needs to start doing things differently and learn from his mistakes, learn from the mistakes of those who preceded him.

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